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SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 



BY 



MARY P. THACHER. 



That which some would call idleness, I will call the sweetest 
part of my life, and that is, my thinking. 

Owen Feltham. 




v./ 



No IKoOL 

BOSTON: 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood. *& Co. 

• 1877. 






Copyright, 1876. 
By MARY P. TEACHER. 



/<: ' </'/ Ob^ 



University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 



TO 



HENRY W. LONGFELLOW, 

WHOSE SONGS HAVE CHEERED SO MANY TRAVELLERS 
BY THE WAYSIDE, 

Z\}is little Uolume 

IS, BY PERMISSION, 
GRATEFULLY DEDICATED. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Old York i 

Water-Lilies in Newport 13 

The Knox House 26 

A Mountain Adventure 3^ 

Two Brave Women . . . . . . -53 

A Dying Race 61 

The Massacre of the Innocents ^ * - - I:^ 

Passenger Pigeons 89 

One Hundred Years ago 94 

About Spinning- Wheels 117 

Our Literary Club . 129 

The Misery of it i35 

Up the Mississippi 142 

Prairie Life I49 

A Prairie Wedding 191 

Flyaway 205 

Some Little Folks who live in the Dark . 212 

Quaint Letters from the South . . . 221 

The Last Angel of Correggio .... 228 



SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 



OLD YORK. 



CCASIONALLY a traveller alights 
from the cars at Portsmouth, N. H., 
formerly known as '* Strawberry Bank," and 
instead of being swept away by the fashion- 
able current which sets to the Isles of Shoals, 
clambers into the crowded York stage-coach. 
In that rheumatic vehicle he is jolted over a 
long, dusty, and hilly road ; but glimpses of 
York River, with its luxuriant groves and 
verdant slopes, refresh the eye, and Agamen- 
ticus lifts his three majestic heads above the 
horizon in welcome. On which of those blue 
peaks St. Aspinquid, the Indian apostle, lies 
I c 



2 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

buried, tradition saith not. But the legend 
says that after the saint was converted to 
Christianity he spent fifty years in preaching 
to the native tribes ''from the Atlantic to the 
Cahfornia seas," and that when he rested from 
his labors the Indians sacrificed over six thou- 
sand wild animals to his departed spirit. 

York is one of the oldest of the old sea- 
port towns which summer travel has invaded 
and brought into notice, for it disputes with 
St. Augustine the honor of having been the 
first city in America. When Charles the 
First granted a portion of the Province of 
Maine to Ferdinando Gorges, the territory 
now known as York became the seat of gov- 
ernment, and was called the city of Gorgeana. 
But the authority of Gorges was of short 
duration ; a few weeks after his royal master 
was beheaded the boasted city charter was 
revoked, and Massachusetts assumed control 
of the colony. *'Then," complains a local 
orator, '' they gave us the short, snappish 



OLD YORK, 3 

name of York by which we are to this day 
known, and the liquid, euphonious name of 
Gorgeana, after an existence of ten short 
years, was forever wiped out." The present 
condition of York is thus bewailed by one 
of her townsmen : " He (Gorges) selected this 
place, and was so pleased with the locality as 
to bestow upon us the honor of being denizens 
of tJie first European city on the American 
continent. Of this we should be and are 
proud, although clothed now in a garb of 
the lowest humility. We were sold out to a 
rival company, as it were, for thirty pieces 
of silver, and crucified on the altar of the 
ambition of the Massachusetts Bay Com- 
pany ; and after enjoying our city charter 
for a brief period, became a town of much 
note, this place being the seat of justice for 
the whole province of Maine for a long period. 
But we commenced to dwindle by degrees, 
until now we are comparatively isolated from 
the rest of mankind To such an extent 



4 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

have we fallen in our own and the estimation 
of other neighboring places, that we hardly 
have a heart to relate our sorrowful condition." 
The only traces now existing of the embryo 
city are a few narrow parallel streets near the 
mouth of the river, similar to the little lanes 
which lead down to the old wharves in New- 
port, R. I. Two garrison-houses are still 
standing, — perhaps the veritable structures 
which held out against the Indians when 
the town was destroyed in 1692. Scattered 
about the town are many venerable home- 
steads occupied by descendants of the old 
royalists, who jealously guard the traditions 
of the past. Yet York was not behindhand 
in patriotism, for two years before Thomas 
Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence the people of York drew up a 
similar document. This was sent to Boston, 
and the oldest inhabitant cherishes the fixed 
belief that Mr. Jefferson borrowed some of 
his famous sentences, such as '^ taxation with- 



OLD YORK, 5 

out representation," from the York resolu- 
tions. The old York meeting-house is sacred 
to the memory of the eccentric Father Moody. 
There he administered his celebrated rebuke 
to his tardy parishioner, a stately English- 
man, who walked up the broad aisle in prayer- 
time. "And, O good Lord," prayed the 
worthy parson, "among thy other kind dis- 
pensations, cure thy servant who has just 
entered thy house of that ungodly strut." 

The fearless old preacher spared neither 
friend nor foe, and even the ladies of the 
parish did not escape. " One day," says the 
record, "a lady came sweeping into church 
in a new hooped dress. * Here she comes,' 
cried Father Moody, ' top and top-gallant, 
rigged most beautifully and sailing most ma- 
jestically. But she has a leak that will sink 
her to hell' " 

Perhaps no event ever more effectually 
aroused the parson's fiery indignation than 
the behavior of some of his flock toward 



6 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

the Indians. The Harmon brothers were 
seafaring men, and in their absence from 
home their families suffered severely from 
Indian cruelties, and they vowed revenge. 
Peace had just been declared between the 
hostile races after a long war of extermina- 
tion, when the people of York, as a proof 
of good-will, invited the Indians to a banquet. 
The savages hesitated ; but the assurances 
of good faith were so earnest and solemn that 
they finally yielded. The carousal was held 
in a small house near the river. The Indians 
were cautious and distrustful at first, but a 
cordial reception and abundant supplies of 
liquor threw them off their guard. Suddenly 
the house was surrounded by armed men, and 
the poor creatures were massacred without 
mercy. The Harmons were the instigators 
of this piece of treachery. 

The next Sunday Father Moody looked 
sternly down upon his breathless congrega- 
tion, and slowly repeated the text, " I have 



OLD YORK, ' 7 

seen the wicked in great power, and spread- 
ing himself like a green bay-tree ; yet he 
passed away, and lo, he was not; yea, I 
sought him, but he could not be found." A 
fiery denunciation of the crime followed, end- 
ing with the prediction that at no distant day 
the Harmon family, which was then large and 
flourishing, would become extinct. The proph- 
ecy was fulfilled. The family continued to live 
in York, but it slowly dwindled away till no 
one was left to transmit the fated name. 

Father Moody's grave lies opposite the 
church, among mossy marbles which are 
broken and crumbling to decay. His son, 
" Handkerchief Moody," whose sad life sug- 
gested Hawthorne's story, T/ie Ministers 
Black Veily is buried in the neighboring par- 
ish of Scotland. This portion of York was 
settled by Scottish royalists whom Cromwell 
had taken prisoners in battle and banished to 
America. There are many dark and myste- 
rious versions of the tragedy that shadowed 



8 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

Joseph Moody's life. When a young man this 
unfortunate parson accidentally shot an inti- 
mate friend with whom he was hunting, and, 
it is commonly supposed, was so overcome 
with grief and remorse that he thenceforth 
veiled his face from mortal sight. The death 
of his friend inspired the local muse, and the 
poet sung, — 

" O, lamentable, lamentable! 
What has become of PIbenezer Preble?** 

It is stated, however, on good authority, 
that Joseph Moody was at first a very popu- 
lar young lawyer, and was elected to various 
high offices by his admiring townsmen. This 
state of affairs did not please Father Moody, 
who commanded his son to renounce the 
world, and don the ministerial robes. Joseph 
obeyed ; but becoming convinced, after a few 
years, that he was not fitted for the work, and 
that he had committed a great sin in under- 
taking to preach, he abandoned his labors and 
took the black veil. The grave of Handker- 



OLD YORK. 9 

chief Moody is in a little enclosure shaded by 
old trees, and the dark headstone is over- 
grown with moss. *' An excellent instance of 
knowledge, learning, ingenuity, piety, and use- 
fulness," says the epitaph, and '' uncommonly 
qualified and spirited to do good." The date 
of the decease is followed by these lines : — 

"Altho' this stone may crumble into dust, 
Yet Joseph Moody's name continue must." 

Not far from this, on Cider Hill, a decrepit 
apple-tree is pointed out which was brought 
in a tub from England two and a half centu- 
ries ago. It is popularly believed that this 
aged tree still bears fruit, though it is, to all 
appearance, little more than a decayed and 
picturesque trunk. 

York boasts of two bathing beaches, and 
the beautiful " Long Sands," two miles from 
the village, deserve to be better known. 
From the great caravansary which stands 
midway on the Sands strange figures emerge 
at all hours of the day, and after a plunge in 



lO SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

the icy surf paddle back to their rooms in 
dripping garments and rubbers full of water, 
leaving behind them little briny streams in 
the halls and on the stairs. A few small cot- 
tages on the beach are occupied in turn, dur- 
ing the summer months, by poor families from 
inland towns, who thus get a breath of life- 
giving air at little expense. Boon Island 
Light, the scene of so many terrible ship- 
wrecks, rises from the ocean in front, and at 
dusk twinkles amid the waste of waters like 
the early evening star. Off at the right lie 
the Isles of Shoals, and the brilliant revolving 
light on White Island calls up pleasant mem- 
ories of the small maiden who once "lit the 
lamps in the lighthouse tower." 

On the left a long neck of land runs out 
into the sea, and terminates in Cape Ned- 
dock, a corruption of Haddock. Separated 
at high tide from this point by a deep chan- 
nel is a rocky headland called the Nubble, 
crowned bv two weather-beaten huts which 



OLD YORK. II 

shelter the sportsmen who go there in the 
autumn to shoot wild ducks. There the sup- 
posed discoverer of Agamenticus, Captain 
Gosnold, is said to have landed in 1602. No 
stunted tree or shrub takes root upon the 
Nubble, but richly tinted wild-flowers bloom 
in the clefts of the rocks, and delicate vines 
cling to the rough bowlders, the playthings 
of the winter storms. 

York is not yet a fashionable retreat, for 
fashion cannot brook the stage-ride, and the 
favored few who have discovered this quiet 
haven pray that the day of railroads may be 
far distant. The inhabitants cUng lovingly to 
the past. 

"To live forgotten and die forlorn'' is not 
agreeable, yet they accept the present with 
mournful resignation. When summer brings 
in her train a few dozen transient guests, the 
villagers feel a gleam of hope. Who knows 
what may yet be in store for the old town, 
with its green farms and hillsides, and the 



12 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

picturesque river which artists love to sketch ? 
But with the frosts of autumn the old apathy 
creeps over the people, and they turn for 
comfort to the ancient splendor, the dreams 
of their ancestors. The doomed city of Gor- 
geana springs from oblivion, and in the light 
of other days they bask content. 




WATER-LILIES IN NEWPORT. 




E had spent the summer mornings lazily- 
swinging in hammocks, and idly watch- 
ing the stray eddies of fashion which swept 
through our quiet street. Gayly dressed maid- 
ens tripped lightly by ; stately carriages, at- 
tended by scornful footmen in livery, and 
whose occupants wore upon their faces an 
expression of mournful resignation, slowly rum- 
bled along ; and mad express-wagons rattled 
over the stones. But these had alike lost their 
charm. 

Then at sunset we had sailed among the 
islands in the bay, startling the white-winged 
sea-gulls from their rocky perches, and nearly- 
upsetting our boat in vain attempts to grasp 



14 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

some of the tantalizing sea-anemones which 
opened and shut their pink blossoms in the 
clear water. And once we carelessly ran 
down a graceful little craft, the " Red Bird," 
thereby cruelly wrecking both the small sloop 
and the hopes of its boyish captain. What 
more had Newport to offer us? Life was be- 
coming monotonous, and we pined for an ad- 
venture. 

We had driven one day by a roadside 
pond, white with lilies. The sight called up 
memories of a certain cool dark meadow in 
Northern Maine, surrounded by fir-clad hills, 
where every summer the white lilies opened 
their fragrant buds, and where their lovers 
gathered them by hundreds. Those lilies be- 
longed to the dreams of youth ; and these 
were as unattainable. At least the careful 
Professor said they were ; and the youth who 
usually escorted us on our expeditions, whose 
golden locks and blond mustache belied his 
Italian name, said, " No, I can't go out in that 



WATER-LILIES IN NEWPORT. 1 5 

leaky punt. No, you'll have to do without 
lilies this time. Is n't it enough to look at 
them ? " 

But it was n't enough. Giovanni's remarks 
had rankled in our minds ever since. Those 
lilies haunted us by day and by night. And 
when, one sunny morning, the maiden we 
called Jo defiantly whispered, "Let's have 
those lilies, or die ! " we hailed the thought 
as an inspiration. 

The Professor, who, having no sons or 
daughters, made all childhood and youth his 
own, thus keeping his heart forever young, 
usually kept a watchful eye upon us. But he 
had fortunately betaken himself to a distant 
city, to attend a gathering of learned men, 
and had left us in Giovanni's- charge. To be 
sure, there was one other gentleman in our 
quiet family that summer, and in the unreal 
romantic atmosphere in which Newporters 
live, move, and have their being, his existence 
created no surprise. He had lived in many 



1 6 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

climes, that polite, deferential foreigner, and 
the stories with which he entertained ns 
sounded like Arabian Night's Tales. He 
conversed fluently in Latin, Spanish, Arabic, 
anything. He had been an Arabian Bey, and 
he had worn the gown and beads of a Domin- 
ican friar. When evening came he chanted 
the muezzin's call to prayer. He described 
the novel way by which he cured certain 
beautiful Arabian damsels of wearing rings 
in their noses. He introduced us to Sheiks 
and Grand Viziers, and gave us vivid pictures 
of life on a camel's back. Then he arrayed 
us in sheets and tablecloths, that we might 
know how Damascus women looked upon the 
street, and made us sigh for Damascus ice- 
cream, flavored with rose-water. 

But agreeable foreigners are apt to be 
looked upon with suspicion. So it was to 
Giovanni that the shrewd Professor whis- 
pered, as he took his departure, ''Don't let 
the girls drown themselves in that lily-pond ! " 



WA TER-LILIES IN NE WPOR T, 1 7 

But on that eventful morning even Gio- 
vanni had mysteriously disappeared, and we 
hastily ordered two carriages, and started for 
the forbidden pond. Our party consisted of 
a pleasant German lady with her two children, 
the three pretty maidens with their mamma, 
and myself. All the while we fondly believed 
that Giovanni was engaged in his favorite 
pursuit of fishing for sharks. But we de- 
clared that we would drown the youth under 
the lily-pads, should we find that, instead of 
going fishing, he had divined our purpose and 
meant to spoil our fun. Miss Jo shook her 
pretty head defiantly as we uttered these 
deadly threats, and shook the reins also ; 
while her mamma, who, by the way, was 
sorely afflicted with a rose cold, nervously 
clasped her camphor-bottle with both hands, 
and imploringly said, '' Don't tip us over ! " 

" Don't be a goose, mamma," soothingly re- 
plied Miss Bella. 

We dashed through the avenue, the ob- 



1 8 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

served of all observers, and out on the shore 
road, where we could see the waves glisten 
and dash in little white cascades over the 
rocks. Soon we passed some wild rose- 
bushes laden with fragrant blossoms. 

" Mamma, I want some," said Bella. 

" Nev^er ! " cried her mother. " One rose 
in the house would drive me wild." 

At this, we resolutely shut our eyes and 
drove on. 

" Hallo ! " shouted a voice from the carriage 
in the rear. It came from the depths of Miss 
Julia's flapping straw hat. " Have you any 
scissors t I want some roses." 

'' Can't have any," returned Jo ; " mamma 
says so." 

"But I mttsC 

"Daughter," cried the maternal voice, "then 
I shall hav^e a fit of sickness." 

With a shout of defiance Miss Julia sprang 
from the buggy, and plucked the roses with 
her own delicate fino:ers. Meantime her 



WATER-LILIES IN NEWPORT. 1 9 

mamma grasped the camphor -bottle more 
tightly, and we kept on. At length we came 
in sight of the pond, and strained our eyes 
for a glimpse of the treacherous Giovanni. 
He was not there, unless he had transformed 
himself, by the aid of the water kelpie, into 
the large black dog which sat upon the brink, 
as if to save us from a watery grave. Then 
arose upon the soft summer air the mingling 
of many voices. 

" Girls, I cannot be left with the horses," 
declared anxious mamma. 

" Don't leave us all alone," cried the good- 
natured German lady. 

But the spirit of adventure had taken pos- 
session of young and old, and all except the 
two forlorn matrons clambered through or 
climbed over the fence by the roadside. Af- 
ter long hunting and many imprecations upon 
the meddlesome Giovanni, the small, flat-bot- 
tomed, leaky punt was discovered hidden in 
the bushes at the wrong end of the pond, 



20 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

where it would be impossible to launch it 
But with a shout of triumph the boat was 
captured by the two most enterprising dam- 
sels, and carried in their aching arms around 
the pond, through the tall grass and weeds, 
amid screams of fright lest imaginary reptiles 
should attack their tender feet. Meantime 
the two youngsters, like a pair of noisy ducks 
kept out of their native element, clamored to 
wade into the pond, and were shouted at, 
scolded, and commanded to keep out of the 
water. Notwithstanding which, they per- 
sisted in dancing down to the water's edge, 
and wetting their feet in trying to reach decep- 
tive lilies. The boat was finally pushed into 
the mud, and Jo seated herself in the bottom, 
and with two short paddles painfully propelled 
herself forward. The children screamed, and 
a confused murmur of alarm came from the 
roadside. The anxious sisters left upon the 
bank cried, "You'll be drowned!" ''You 
never can do it ! " '' Sit quietly ! " '' Sit in 



WATER-LILIES IN NEWPORT. 21 

the middle!'' "Get out and let me try it!" 
till the incensed voyager requested them in 
no mild terms to hold their peace, and the 
enfant terrible innocently remarked, '' If I were 
you, I would n't be cross to my sisters." 

Then Bella and I removed our shoes and 
stockings and ventured into the water. But, 
as it appeared afterward, the malicious Gio- 
vanni had taken pains to gather all the lilies 
near the shore, and we only sunk hopelessly 
deeper and deeper into the slimy ooze. At 
this stage, piercing cries for help came from 
the road. " The horses are crazy ! They are 
jumping out of their harness ! O, what, what 
shall we do } " 

We who were fixed fast among the lily- 
pads turned our heads, and saw the two 
matrons dancing wildly about in the dust, 
while the two horses meekly stood still and 
gazed at them in astonishment. Presently a 
carriage approached, and the dignified Jehu 
condescended to alight, to soothe the per- 



22 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

turbed minds of the ladies and examine the 
harness, which probably one or two hungry 
flies had disarranged. 

Soon afterward Jo landed, her garments 
dripping with water, and laden with fragrant 
spoils. And then her sister JuKa entered the 
fleet boat, and kneeling in the bottom pushed 
off for the opposite shore. We climbed into 
the carriages and waited. The hour of noon 
approached ; the horses were impatient to be 
off; but still the persistent Julia labored on, 
while the water slowly trickled into the boat. 

*' She '11 be drowned ! " shrieked the mother. 
" My eldest born ! Won't she 'i " The latter 
remark was addressed to a countryman who 
was driving by, and who stopped at sight of 
her distress. 

" Why, marm, she would n't be there if she 
w^as n't well used to that pond." 

** No, no, she was never there before." 

"Wal, I guess nobody was ever drownded 
there," replied the man. And as he drove 



WATER-LILIES IN NEWPORT. 23 

away, his tall son added soothingly, "The 
water is n't much over my head." 

But at last the young woman ended her 
dangerous voyage, threw us exultingly a skirt 
full of lilies, and then wandered up and down 
the road, through the dusty grass, in search 
of her shoes. 

At length we were all safely embarked for 
home. By this time the distressed mamma's 
nerves had naturally been wrought up to a 
high pitch, and she became possessed with 
the idea that Jo did not know how to drive, 
and that we had escaped Scylla only to fall 
on Charybdis. 

*' Mamma, never, as long as I live, will I 
take you to drive again," declared the annoyed 
Jo. But at every such reproof her m'amma 
would say in a surprised tone and with perfect 
seriousness, '* Why, I am not timid, child ! 
Not in the least." 

Meanwhile our small irrepressible declared 
that America was a horrid country ; she 



24 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

wished she had never seen it ; she hated it ; 
why did n't her mamma stay in Germany ? 
And Bella declared that children were the 
ruthless destroyers of all earthly happiness. 

Suffice it to say, in conclusion, that we 
reached home in safety, having escaped all 
perils by sea and land, and decorated the 
dinner-table from one end to the other with 
our fair trophies. The Professor, who had 
written an essay on water-lilies, in which 
he called them cups of snow, and other pretty 
names, was not there to see our triumph. 
But our foreign friend poetically remarked, 
that the lily took the same place among 
flowers that the swan held among birds. 

We found that Giovanni had indeed sus- 
pected our plans, and done his best to defeat 
them. But he was discovered, and his long 
w^alk under the burning sun had given him 
a terrible headache. 

"Of what avail is it, O Giovanni,'' we cried, 
" to thwart a woman } " 



WATER-LILIES IN NEWPORT. 25 

But Giovanni only solemnly replied, '* If you 
had been drowned, what would the Professor 
have done to me ? " 

All this happened long ago. The pretty 
maidens have sought other fields to conquer ; 
Giovanni is roaming with brush and easel 
under the sunny skies of Italy ; and our for- 
eign friend has vanished as suddenly and 
mysteriously as he appeared. The Professor 
still pores over his books, still writes essays, 
and bestows his rare smiles upon his youthful 
friends. More noteworthy events have hap- 
pened and been forgotten ; but the fragrance 
of those Newport water-lilies yet lingers in 
my memory. 




THE KNOX HOUSE. 



'HE command, ''Remove not the an- 
cient landmarks," is held in light es- 
teem in our day and generation. The recent 
destruction of General Knox's old home, in 
Maine, is perhaps not generally known, though 
the long indifference with which the building 
had been regarded foretold its slow but sure 
decay. 

The Knox House stood on the banks of the 
St. George's River, in Thomaston, near the 
site of an old fort erected in colonial times, 
for defence against the French and Indians. 
In the rear of the mansion there were several 
neat buildings, — the stables, the servants' 
lodgings, and the cook-house. "Beautifully 



THE KNOX HOUSE. 2/ 

at the water's edge sat this sumptuous villa/' 
writes the old historian of the town, "as it 
first caught the eye and struck the lofty mind 
of Mrs. Knox." A French nobleman who was 
a guest here describes the mansion as " a 
handsome, though not magnificent structure." 
But the enthusiastic chronicler hastens to 
explain that the Duke brought his ideas of 
magnificence from degenerate and luxurious 
France. 

General Knox took up his abode here in 
1795, and the family made the journey from 
Philadelphia to Thomaston in a sloop. "Mont- 
pelier," as Mrs. Knox called her new home in 
the wilderness, excited the wonder and ad- 
miration of the village. The General owned 
a vast tract of land in this vicinity, which he 
wished to settle with a tenantry, after the 
English fashion. To encourage the speedy 
settlement of the country, he interested him- 
self in various kinds of business. He built 
ships and saw-mills, and engaged in brick- 



28 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

making and lime-burning ; he imported game 
from Massachusetts, and new breeds of cattle 
and sheep from England. His hospitality was 
unbounded, and his house was thronged with 
guests, many of whom were distinguished for- 
eigners. Wonderful stories are told of the 
grand style of living in vogue at the mansion. 
It is said that twenty sheep were often con- 
sumed in a week, and that oxen were roasted 
whole before the immense fireplaces ; that 
the General kept twenty saddle-horses in his 
stable ; and that he had a road cut for a 
pleasure-party to a neighboring mountain, still 
a favorite place for picnics, at the expense of 
five hundred dollars, — a great sum in those 
days. It is even stated that he extended his 
hospitality so far as to invite the whole tribe 
of Penobscot Indians to make him a visit ; 
and that when these strange visitors had 
feasted for weeks on the General's bounty, he 
remarked, "Now we have had a good time, 
and you 'd better go home." How much 



THE KNOX HOUSE. 29 

of all this is true, and how much mere tra- 
dition, it is now impossible to determine. 
But it is certain that the General was very- 
extravagant ; and no doubt the family lived in 
a style which, in those days, seemed little 
short of princely. Mrs. Knox was a haughty 
Englishwoman, and had little intercourse with 
the townspeople, who always called her Lady 
Knox. She entertained her aristocratic friends, 
and visited them in turn, spending the winters 
in Boston, where she was fond of risking 
large sums of money at the card-table. She 
was small in person, but had so stately an 
air that people were apt to think her very 
tall. Many anecdotes are told in illustration 
of Lady Knox's pride. One day, says tra- 
dition, her carriage, the only one in the village, 
broke down, and it was necessary to dismount 
while some temporary repairs were made. A 
kind-hearted woman, who lived near the scene 
of the accident, invited Lady Knox to take 
refuge in her house; but she preferred to 



30 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

stand in the muddy street. Near the mansion 
was an ancient burial-ground, and the grave- 
stones were a constant eyesore to the pleas- 
ure-loving lady. According to the village 
historian, quoted above, ''they interrupted her 
gayety by the unwelcome thoughts of death"; 
but her husband would not consent to have 
them removed. After his death the offending 
stones were thrown down. Another version 
has it that the deed was done in the General's 
absence from home, and that when he re- 
turned, in his vexation " he tore his hair with 
both his hands." 

The General was personally very popular, 
but many of his enterprises failed, and little 
by little his land slipped from his grasp. His 
death was caused by swallowing a chicken- 
bone. His proud lady lived to see the fickle- 
ness of fortune, and then was laid by her 
husband's side. 

Hawthorne visited "Montpelier" in 1837, 
and pronounced it a ''ruinpus old mansion, 



THE KNOX HOUSE. 3 1 

with some grandeur of architecture. " It was 
then occupied by the youngest daughter of 
General Knox, a very agreeable and amiable 
woman. But family pride forbade her to sell 
an inch of land, and she contrived to live and 
keep up a certain appearance of style on her 
small income of six hundred a year. The 
daughters of Lady Knox were not so exclu- 
sive as their mother, and sometimes invited 
a neighbor in to spend the day. On such 
occasions, great baskets of old letters were 
produced, after dinner, for the entertainment 
of the guest. Many of these letters bore the 
signatures of Washington, Lafayette, and other 
celebrities, and one can imagine the glow of 
pride with which they were unfolded. There 
is something pathetic in the picture, — that 
little group of women in the desolate old 
mansion, trying to forget the present in the 
faded glories of the past. 

In 1854 the last child of Knox died, and the 
heirs sold the house and furniture at auction. , 



32 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

The latter was bought by people of the town, 
who exhibit with pride the old-fashioned, well- 
worn sideboards, the handsome plate and 
dainty wineglasses, that once J^elonged to 
Lady Knox. Even the remains of the honored 
dead were not suffered to rest in the family 
vault, but were transported, without any 
ceremony, to the village churchyard. These 
proceedings caused not a little indignation 
among the townspeople. 

In i860 ''Montpelier " was occupied by the 
families of ship-builders, and was fast crumbling 
into ruins. All but two of the outbuildings — 
the brick stable and the farm-house — had been 
removed. The woodbine, which clung to the 
walls as if trying to hide the ravages of time, 
only added to the general appearance of 
desolation. No traces remained of the piazzas 
and balconies which formerly surrounded the 
mansion, and the American eagle which once 
guarded the entrance to the spacious grounds 
had folded his carved wings and fallen from 



THE KNOX HOUSE, 33 

his perch. The view from the flat roof was 
perhaps as beautiful as when Lady Knox stood 
there to survey her broad domains, and watch 
the course of .the river past its wild banks. 
But thrifty villages had sprung up where the 
General intended to have forests and parks. 
The very entrance to the grounds was known 
as Knox Street^ and was lined with rows of 
handsome houses. The front yard, which 
sloped to the water, had been transformed from 
a smooth lawn to a ship-yard, and was filled 
with piles of lumber and the noise of busy 
workmen. A few trees were left standing be- 
fore the old house, to toss their great branches 
in mute protest at the desecration of what 
should be sacred ground. A long flight of 
rickety steps led up to the front of the mansion, 
but the huge brass knocker which was wont to 
announce the stranger, and which bore the 
General's peculiar signature, " Knox," had 
fallen a prey to curiosity-hunters. 

A few years later the mansion was aban- 

2 * C 



34 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

doned by its tenants. The large oval recep- 
tion-room, where Louis Philippe, Talleyrand, 
and other distinguished guests had been wel- 
comed, was used for a carpenter's shop. The 
wall-paper originally bore some faint resem- 
blance to tapestry, but many of the antique 
figures had been torn down, or mutilated, by 
the ruthless hands of visitors. An air of sad- 
ness pervaded the rooms where once thronged 
brilliant assemblies. Up and down the long, 
wide staircases trooped shadows of the past. 
It was like *'some banquet-hall deserted." 
Strangers scolded and mourned in turn over 
this neglect. People acknowledged that it 
was a disgrace to the town, and then forgot 
all about it. At one time an effort was made 
to obtain, by subscription, the necessary funds 
with which to restore the noble old ruin, and 
it was proposed to keep it in repair by charging 
an admission-fee to the numerous strangers 
who visited it every summer. But the people, 
however disposed in theory to reverence past 



THE KNOX HOUSE, 35 

greatness, were bound up in the present, and 
the project failed. 

About three years ago the tottering struc- 
ture, stately even in its decay, was pulled down, 
to make way for the Knox and Lincoln Rail- 
road, and the farm-house was converted into a 
station-house. Thus the shrill whistle of the 
engine has drowned the voices of the past, 
and the busy tide of American life has swept 
away every vestige of this ancient landmark, 
the home of Washington's friend. 




A MOUNTAIN ADVENTURE. 



A LEGEND OF CAMDEN. 




'HE coast of Maine has a peculiar charm 
for strangers during the hot months, 



not only for the infinite variety of scenery it 
affords, that marvellous combination of sea and 
forest, of mountain lakes and green meadows, 
but because 

"There's iron in our Northern winds, 
Our pines are trees of healing." 

The traveller who enters the waters of Pe- 
nobscot Bay for the first time sees with a 
thrill of surprise the range of mountains which 
skirt the shore. Rising grandly from the sea 
in robes of soft blue haze, their irregular out- 
lines sharply defined against the bluer sky. 



A MOUNTAIN ADVENTURE. 3/ 

the Camden Hills, as they are popularly 
called, add not a little to the attractions of 
that locality. By the time the traveller comes 
in sight of Rockport, that picturesque little 
village encircled by hills, where the houses are 
perched high up on the ragged cliffs like 
eagles' eyries, he longs for a nearer view. 
And if he be one of the rare persons in these 
hurried Hves of ours who can stop to breathe 
without being closely pursued by a conscien- 
tious fit of remorse, he will determine to 
become better acquainted with the wild beau- 
ties of this region. 

There is Ragged Mountain, famous for blue- 
berries, and for sending small boys home to 
their distraught mammas in the sad plight 
of Phoebe, the blackberry-girl, minus berries, 
and with garments torn to shreds. 

There is Mt. Pleasant, with its long slope 
and its short slope, and its magnificent range 
of vision ; the same mountain to which Gen- 
eral Knox, as it is currently reported and 



38 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

believed, caused a carriage road to be cut 
from Thomaston solely for the accommodation 
of a pleasure-party, at great expense to his 
private purse. 

And there is Mt. Megunticook, wilder and 
more majestic than either of the three or 
their attendant hills, at whose base lies a 
beautiful lake. Between the lake and the 
mountain runs the " turnpike," a narrow road 
just wide enough for one carriage, and bor- 
dered on both sides by huge rocks that 
have tumbled from the crags above. From 
this road the mountain rises almost perpen- 
dicularly, and its bare, jagged heights are 
terrible in their grandeur. 

Megunticook, the peculiar name by which 
Camden was originally known, is said to sig- 
nify '^ great swells of the sea." The turnpike 
is a great favorite for pleasure-seekers. Pic- 
nics without number are held in its luxuriant 
groves of maple and birch, through which a 
mountain brook rushes and tumbles. Boating- 



A MOUNTAIN ADVENTURE. 39 

parties make the echoes ring with their merry- 
songs as they lazily ghde over the tranquil 
lake. Clam-bakes desecrate the pretty little 
islands that are scattered over the pond ; and 
even a mock Woman's Rights Convention 
was held one summer under the very shadow 
of the mountain. The speakers, selecting a 
great block of granite for the rostrum, ap- 
pealed to Nature, the mother of us all, for 
sympathy in their well-known wrongs. And 
if the lake might have been detected in an 
occasional ripple of laughter, the everlasting 
rocks, more generous than man, echoed the 
shrill applause. 

The " Lake House " on the shore, an un- 
pretending structure in all but name, fur- 
nishes lemonade to the thirsty ; and the 
farmer who lives close by invites unsuspect- 
ing boys to help themselves to apples and 
cherries, and then laughs at their blank faces 
when he demands payment for every mouth- 
ful. 



40 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

We were a party of young people on pleas- 
ure bent, on our way to Bangor and thence 
to the wilds of Northern Maine, when the 
scenery of Camden Harbor tempted us to 
stop there for a day or two, and explore the 
country. And as the good people we met 
held up their hands with horror at the bare 
idea of our not picnicking at the turnpike, 
to the turnpike we went. We went through 
the usual programme. We spread the con- 
tents of our baskets in a shady spot, and 
while we shared the good things with the 
spiders, ants, and grasshoppers that came to 
the feast unbidden, the mosquitoes feasted 
on us. 

We made wry faces over the lemonade ; we 
visited the orchard of the crabbed old farmer 
who solemnly assured us that thieving boys 
were " thicker than Jews in Tophet " ; we 
landed on all the islands, and even left in exile, 
for a brief period, a youth who was anxious to 
experience the emotions of Robinson Crusoe ; 



A MOUNTAIN ADVENTURE. 4 1 

we skipped stones over the clear water of the 
pond, trembhng meantime lest the frowning 
cliffs, by way of joining in the sport, should 
send down a rocky messenger to spoil our fun; 
and then some daring spirit proposed that we 
should climb the mountain. 

" No one can do it who is n't pretty tough ! " 
cried Robin, our oldest and wisest. " Some- 
body must stay here to watch the horses. 
Somebody must row out to that desert island 
and rescue the deluded exile. The sun is hot, 
and there is no path up the mountain. Who- 
ever climbs must encounter bushes and briers, 
rocks and stumps. Who wants to go } Don't 
all speak at once !" 

But we were not easily frightened, and hav- 
ing decided by lot which were the strongest, 
four of us provided ourselves with staves, and 
after a hard scramble scaled old Megunticook's 
least precipitous side, and stood triumphant 
on his ragged summit. With delighted excla- 
mations we viewed "the scattered landscape 



42 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

o'er." The broad bay with its white sails 
stretched away to the horizon on one hand ; 
on the other, a succession of wooded hills and 
green valleys. The distant villages looked like 
white specks in the landscape, and here and 
there wreaths of smoke curled up from fires in 
the woods. Before us the mountain descended 
abruptly for several hundred feet, when the 
sheer precipice was broken by fallen bowlders 
which were piled up in wild confusion to the 
edge of the lake. A gentle breeze stirred the 
few low bushes and stunted trees that grew 
upon the mountain-top, and my eye caught a 
glimpse of something tall and white glistening 
through the leaves near the brink of the 
precipice. 

Springing to the place and pushing away 
the intervening boughs, I uttered a cry of 
surprise which brought the others around me 
in an instant. " See ! " I exclaimed, pointing 
to the strange object before me; **one would 
think we were in some Catholic country. " 



A MOUNTAIN ADVENTURE, 43 

It was a simple wooden cross, painted white, 
firmly planted in the slight crumbling soil, and 
apparently fastened, in some mysterious way, 
to the rocky foundation beneath. On it, in 
deep-cut letters, was carved the one word : 
"Grace." 

" A mystery ! " cried Robin. " Now, if our 
romantic friend on the island were here, he 
would insist that a lovely damsel named Grace 
had been treacherously slain on this spot, 
probably by a disappointed lover ; or that some 
unfortunate being oppressed with a guilty 
conscience had thrown himself over the 
precipice, and this cross was a prayer of grace 
for his soul." 

" Nonsense, " said Horton, who was severely 
practical. " It 's another ' Maiden Rock.* I 
have seen one in Maine already, where a love- 
sick Indian girl is supposed to have jumped 
off; but I did n't know any State boasted of 
more than one.'* 

" Grace was no Indian maiden," said Hor- 



44 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

ton's sister Ruth, quietly. She had been 
straying off by herself, but had joined our little 
group in time to hear her brother s speech. 

" Why, what do you know about it 1 " we all 
exclaimed in surprise. 

"That gossipy old lady at the hotel told me 
the story this morning, and a sad story it is. 
Several of the boarders corroborated it, and I 
intended to look for the cross the first thing, 
but quite forgot it, the view was so charm- 
ing. 

"And you never said a word about it! 
Kept it all to yourself! Now you shall do 
penance, you selfish creature, by sitting down 
on this rock and telling us the story," I cried. 

And Ruth, vainly expostulating that there 
was not time, told us with much feeling the 
tragic story of the wooden cross. 

"It's an *ower true tale,'" she began, "but 
you must let me tell it my own way, and not 
mind if my fancy sometimes helps me out a 
little. It happened only a few years ago, in 



A MO UA' TAIN ADVENTURE. 45 

1864, I think. It seems a young couple 
climbed to the mountain-top one summer 
day, as we have done ; a young girl who 
lived in the farm-house yonder, and the youth 
to whom she was engaged. He had come 
down here the summer before to rest for a 
few weeks, having just finished his profes- 
sional studies, and had fallen in love with the 
farmer's daughter. They say she was high- 
spirited and a bit wilful, and would have 
nothing to say to the honest young men 
hereabouts who ventured to admire her. She 
was an only child, and roamed among the 
hills at her own sweet will, a sort of mountain 
sprite. She was small and slight and very 
fair to look upon, and my old lady, who, by 
the way, is inclined to be rather romantic, 
said her eyes were as clear and deep and 
blue as the lake on whose banks she first 
opened them. The next summer her lover 
came again ; and he asked Grace to be his 
wife, and go with him to the West, where he 



46 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

was to begin his labors as a clergyman. Af- 
ter some hesitation, for though she loved him 
she was loath to leave her mountain home, she 
consented. They had climbed up here to 
take a last look at her beloved hills, and were 
standing arm in arm near the very place 
where we are seated now, when Grace ex- 
claimed in her impetuous way, ' Only see that 
clump of harebells on the ledge below, James ! 
I must have them, roots and all, to take with 
me.' 

"'Dearest, you couldn't make harebells 
grow on those Western plains. They would 
not bear transplanting from their native soil/ 

" ' And how do you know / can bear trans- 
planting ? ' she asked impulsively. 

*' * If I thought you could not bloom any- 
where but on your native hills, my little 
mountain maid, I would go away alone and 
leave you here to gladden some happier man's 
life,' said the young man, softly, while a shade 
of sadness passed over his face. 



A MOUNTAIN ADVENTURE. 47 

" ' O, forgive me ! ' said the girl, leaning 
fondly on her lover's arm. * But I must have 
my harebells. I never saw such lovely ones. 
They 're as blue as the sky, and yet they 
never looked up to it.' 

" ' Perhaps they caught their delicate tints 
from the lake below,' replied James. * Stay 
here, Grace, and I '11 find you some harebells 
as beautiful as those, that grow in a less dan- 
gerous place.' 

" ^ But if I had those I should remember 
that they had all their lives looked down into 
my beautiful lake. They would seem part of 
my life here.' 

" * But they grow out of reach, love, and one 
misstep would cost a life.' 

" ' If you should hold my hand, James, I 
could n't fall, and I could lean over, — so ! ' 
pleaded the girl. But the youth drew her 
back with a shudder. 

" ' It 's enough to make one dizzy to think 
of it, Grace. Wait for me on yonder rock. 



48 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

I can be quicker alone, and it 's growing dusk. 
Stay here till I come back. I know a place 
less steep than this where they grow. Prom- 
ise me you '11 wait here ! " 

" ' Yes, I '11 wait ; don't be long/ said the 
girl, reluctantly. 

'^ The young man was gone longer than he 
thought, and fully half an hour had elapsed 
when he hurried back, his hands full of hare- 
bells, calling, ' Come, Grace, we must go before 
it's any later.' 

** Hearing no response, he hastened to the 
rock where he had left the girl, and was be- 
wildered to find no one there. 

*' ' Can she have gone down without me, or 
got frightened and gone to find me.'^' he 
thought. 

'' Suddenly, as if seized with a new dread, 
he dropped the harebells which he had pro- 
cured with so much difficulty, and sprang to 
the verge of the precipice. No, the coveted 
harebells were still ungathered,' and saucily 



A MOUNTAIN ADVENTURE, 49 

shook their blue bells at the youth as if to 
say, ' Pick us, if you dare ! ' He was turning 
away with a sigh of relief, when a fragment of 
white muslin, fluttering from a bush beneath, 
caught his eye. His heart gave one wild 
beat ; then for an instant he seemed para- 
lyzed. But in another moment he had swung 
himself over the dizzy height, and was leaping 
from crag to crag, clinging to the stunted 
trees, and tearing his hands and clothes on 
the sharp rocks in his crazy descent. How 
he made the perilous leap he could never 
tell ; both then and afterward it seemed like 
a horrible dream. Before long his worst fears 
were realized, for he discovered Grace lying 
pale and motionless at the foot of a great 
bowlder which had intercepted her fall. Find- 
ing it was useless to try to rescue her from her 
dangerous position, he hastened toward the 
road with the hope of hailing some passer-by. 
As good fortune would have it, two gentle- 
men were driving by the lake at that mo- 

3 ' D 



50 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

inent, and stopped on seeing the young 
man leap over the rocks, and wave his cap, 
like one mad. They helped him extricate the 
unfortunate girl, and as the twilight shad- 
ows gathered, bore her home and laid the 
bruised form in her weeping mother's arms. 
She lived only a few hours. Her lover soon 
went away, and has never been seen here 
since. Her father erected the cross, partly as 
a warning to other daring adventurers." 

** You 've made quite a story of it," said 
Robin, placing his hand on the cross and 
looking over the top. " There are the hare- 
bells ! " 

We all peeped carefully over, and it really 
seemed as if the graceful little wild-flowers were 
more beautiful than any we had seen before. 

** How do you account for your heroine's 
breaking her promise 1 " asked Horton. 

'' Her friends thought she got tired of wait- 
ing and couldn't resist the desire to steal one 
more look at the flowxrs that had so taken 



A MO UNTA IN A D VENTURE. 5 I 

her fancy, and she was careless and lost her 
footing.'* 

'^ Perhaps it was better so," remarked Robin, 
sagely. *^ The atmosphere of the West might 
not have agreed with her any more than with 
the mountain harebells. And probably the 
heart-broken lover has consoled himself, long 
before this, with some buxom prairie lass. 
But come, the sun is going down, and so 
must we." 

This mournful story, which I heard after- 
wards from a relative of the unfortunate girl, 
is little known ; and but few of the gay people 
who drive around the turnpike in the summer 
months ever look up to the white cross which 
is just visible through the green leaves on the 
mountain-top. 

Those who do discover it little dream of 
its meaning, thinking it perhaps some Coast 
Survey signal. To us who visited Megunti- 
cook that summer day the place is associated 
forever with the memory of the mountain 



52 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

girl. The simple monument which bears her 
name still stands ; and the treacherous little 
flowers that beckoned her to ruin toss their 
blue bells as merrily as ever, while the dancing 
lake ripples as gayly over its pebbly banks as 
if no shadow of terror had ever darkened its 
limpid waters. 




TWO BRAVE WOMEN. 



ORE than two centuries ago the old 
town of Machias, in the eastern part 
of Maine, — Majais, the French called it, — 
was well known to English and French ad- 
venturers, and was the scene of many bitter 
quarrels between them. It was first settled 
by the French, who gave to all that part 
of Maine the beautiful name of Acadia. 

Soon after the battle of Lexington a cer- 
tain Captain Jones, of Boston, arrived at Ma- 
chias with his two sloops. He was in the 
habit of ''trading" with the Machias people, 
exchanging the goods and provisions he car- 
ried there for lumber. This time he was 
accompanied by an armed schooner, and was 



54 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

careful not to land his goods till the people 
agreed to trade with him as usual Prob- 
ably this very caution made them suspicious ; 
and then it was not pleasant to see a British 
cutter anchored in their river. They knew 
that lumber was just what the royal troops 
needed for their barracks ; the affair at Lex- 
ington had aroused all their patriotic ardor ; 
and they determined that Captain Jones should 
never return to Boston with his vessels. To 
understand what this decision cost them, we 
must remember that the settlers were wholly 
dependent on "lumbering" for support. 

To be sure, the men did not have to make 
long journeys on their sleds into the forests 
and there camp out for the winter, as the 
lumbermen of Maine do now. Then there 
were woods everywhere about the settlement, 
which was at a great distance from any large 
town ; and as there were no roads, the only 
way to get relief in a time of need was by 
water, and this way could be easily cut off 



Tiro BRAVE WOMEN. 55 

by an enemy. Except a scanty supply of 
potatoes, no vegetables were raised there ; 
and the people owned very few cows, and 
only oxen enough to haul lumber in winter. 
Many families often had nothing but clams 
to eat for weeks at a time, and when Captain 
Jones's sloops arrived there were not pro- 
visions enough in the township to last three 
weeks. But rather than let King George's 
troops have any of their lumber, these destitute 
people made up their minds to starve. 

So they agreed to take possession of the 
sloops and of the Margaretta also, the story 
of whose capture has been told too often to be 
repeated here. A company of volunteers was 
organized on Sunday, the nth of June, but 
only a few charges of powder and ball could 
be mustered for twenty fowling-pieces. Be- 
sides these, they had only thirteen pitchforks 
and ten or twelve axes. 

There was not much time to talk the matter 
over, and a man was quickly sent to Jones- 



56 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

boro, a settlement some sixteen miles distant, 
for ammunition. But after this messenger had 
reached his destination he refused to return. 
As there was no other man to take his 
place, all the Jonesboro men having gone to 
Machias that very day to assist in the capture 
of the vessels, the women w^re filled with 
indignation at this treachery ; and Hannah 
Weston, a young bride of seventeen, whose 
husband and brothers were among the volun- 
teers, went round to the various houses in 
the settlement and collected all the powder, 
lead, and pewter spoons she could find. Then 
she and her sister Rebecca, who was only 
two years older, determined to carry the 
ammunition to Machias themselves. They 
started on their rough tramp Monday morn- 
ing, with about forty pounds of powder and 
lead, bread and meat enough to last two days, 
and a small hatchet. All the women and 
children gathered to see them off; meantime 
the one man in the settlement, the recreant 



TIVO BRAVE WOMEN, 57 

messenger, was hiding in the woods for fear 
of the ^^Britishers''! 

When half the toilsome journey was over, 
Rebecca's strength failed, and Mrs. Weston 
relieved her of her burden, carrying the whole 
load herself the rest of the way. There was 
no road, and indeed no path through the 
dense pine forests. But the men who passed 
through the woods the day before had '' spot- 
ted" a tree here and there, and these faint 
marks were our heroines' only guides through 
the wilderness. When they lost their way, 
which happened to them more than once, 
they sat down on the trunk of some fallen 
tree to rest and refresh themselves with food, 
and then kept bravely on. After wandering 
several miles out of their way, they at length 
reached the Machias River, and decided to 
follow its course down to the settlement. As 
the Indians were often seen on the river in 
canoes, and frequented its banks for game, 
our travellers kept at a safe distance from 
3* 



58 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

the stream. But there was Httle to fear from 
the red men ; and indeed nothing saved Ma- 
chias in those stormy days but the friendli- 
ness of the Indians. 

About dusk, after crossing brooks and wad- 
ing through muddy swamps, the women came 
to the foot of a high hill, and, not knowing 
where they were, threw themselves wearily 
down to rest. There in the gathering twi- 
light they heard the mournful owls hooting 
and the distant barking of wolves. At length 
Mrs. Weston, picking up a stout stick for a 
cane, climbed the hill alone, and from the 
top joyfully discovered the houses of Machias. 
Tying her handkerchief to a bush, that she 
might again find the spot, she hastened back 
to Rebecca. But the tired girl had fallen 
into a heavy sleep, and it was only after a 
vigorous shaking that her sister was able to 
arouse her. 

They arrived at Machias before dark, com- 
pletely exhausted, with their clothes half torn 



TfVO BKAFE WOMEN. 59 

from them, and learned that the Margaretta 
had already been captured. However, they 
were so glad to hear the good news that they 
did not regret what they had done; and 
though the ammunition was not needed then, 
it proved very useful when the British after- 
wards attacked the town. 

The next day, to show that their services 
were appreciated, the Committee of Safety 
made the two brave women a present of 
twelve yards of camlet, worth about eight 
dollars ; and this was considered at that time 
a large sum. Two dresses were made of this 
cloth, and fifty years afterwards a fragment 
of her camlet gown was carefully preserved 
by Mrs. Weston as a memento of her peril- 
ous journey. 

She lived to be nearly one hundred years 
old, and when she was ninety-five she carded 
wool, spun the yarn, and knit it into a pair 
of stockings, without the aid of glasses, to be 
exhibited at the World's Fair in New York. 



6o SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

It IS interesting to know that this woman 
was a descendant of the famous Mrs. Dustan, 
who was taken captive by the Indians at 
Haverhill, Massachusetts, in 1697; for she 
may have inherited some of her pluck and 
fortitude from her great-grandmother. 

This adventure has not been recorded among 
the deeds of brave women of the Revolution ; 
but when the story of the first naval battle 
of the war, the "' Lexington of the sea," is 
told, Hannah Weston's name should not be 
forgotten. 




A DYING RACE. 

HY does not some benevolent person 
organize a society for the protection 
of plants ? Our societies for the prevention 
of cruelty to animals increase and multiply, 
and the chief apostle of the cause is constant- 
ly on the war-path, ubiquitous, irrepressible, 
a terror to evil-doers. But the children of 
the soil, which live, move, and have their 
being in so many bright and beautiful forms, 
suffer almost unnoticed. They perish by vio- 
lence, or are banished from their peaceful 
haunts by bold and grasping foreigners, as 
our native song-birds are driven away by 
the saucy little English sparrows. Yet these 
friends of mankind are lineal descendants of 



62 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

the very oldest families, and have such inti- 
mate relations with the animal kingdom that 
it is impossible, in their lowest forms, to dis- 
tinguish the plant from the animal. To be 
sure, the trees, which are so needlessly sacri- 
ficed all about us, find some able champions, 
and it is cheering to know that the planting 
of forests is encouraged at the West by the 
local governments. But do we realize how rap- 
idly our wild-flowers are disappearing, fright- 
ened away by the encroachments of man 1 
The flora of some parts of the West has 
almost entirely changed within a few years. 
Weeds and vagabond plants from the East- 
ern States, those "gypsies of the vegetable 
world," have crowded out the native growth ; 
and one who now goes West, having heard 
much of the blossoming prairie, is apt to think 
it all a delusion and a snare. The increasing 
love and cultivation of flowers is a good sign 
of the times ; but what garden flower can 
eclipse in beauty the fragrant clusters of 



A DYING RACE, 63 

swamp pink, or azalea, the brilliant cardinal- 
flower, the dainty lady's-slipper, the droop- 
ing arethusa, or the painted trillium ? Every 
year these fair harbingers of spring grow more 
and more scarce. We cut down the woods 
which shelter them ; we trample them down, 
invade their sanctuaries, and let in the glaring 
light of day upon the sweet seclusion of their 
lives. Thus they retreat farther and farther 
from the abodes of man ; or when they still 
lovingly linger about their old haunts, meekly 
crying, ** All we want is to be let alone," we 
give them no peace. We either pick the 
blossoms so thoroughly that they have no 
opportunity to propagate themselves by seed, 
or gather them so carelessly that the very 
roots come up in our hands. The traihng 
arbutus has been actually exterminated in 
many parts of New England by being pulled 
up in this reckless way. The beautiful " Hart- 
ford fern," as it is popularly called, is threat- 
ened by a similar fate. This is one of the 



64 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

few species of climbing fern, and the only 
one found in the United States. But though 
it is so rare, and grows in only a few locali- 
ties, it is brought in large quantities to Boston 
every autumn and sold in bunches, roots and 
all, at the street corners. Indeed, there is 
such a furore now for pressing and trans- 
planting ferns, that many of the more com- 
mon kinds are growing rare. 

A striking illustration of the wild-flower's 
readiness to resent familiarity is furnished by 
that curious plant, the Indian pipe. It lifts 
its cluster of waxy stems, crowned with pale, 
nodding flowers, from the rich soil of deep, 
dark woods ; but if handled, no matter how 
charily, its hue changes to a deep black. 

Yet what happiness to discover the haunts 
of these untrained beauties ! Ah, those poor 
unfortunates who only see the mayflowers tied 
up in stiff' little bunches in our city streets 
know nothing about it. Then, too, wild- 
flowers are graceful ornaments for the house. 



A DYING RACE. 65 

and in early spring nothing can be more 
charming than a dish of violets, hepaticas, 
and anemones, grouped with moss about the 
stems, as if growing in the water. But better 
*'love the wood- rose and leave it on its stalk," 
than rob the woods and fields forever of their 
short-lived glory. On the border of some 
dense woods upon the coast of Maine I once 
discovered a large clump of rhododendrons, 
a shrub hitherto unknown in that region, all 
in full bloom. With the air of a second 
Columbus, I carried home great branches of 
the magnificent flowers and divided them 
among my friends, far and wide. From that 
day my treasures were doomed. Enthusiastic 
women, arming themselves with trowels and 
knives, made repeated pilgrimages to the spot, 
and transported the plants to their gardens, 
where they invariably pined away and died. 
In a short time only a few poor shrubs were 
left, and they, robbed of their glory, indignantly 
refused to blossom more. A patch of hare- 



66 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

bells, those ''bonny blue bells" of Scotland, 
was afterward ruined in the same way ; and a 
certain sunny hillside, which the melting snow 
once left fairly blue with hepaticas, has been 
despoiled in like manner. And now if I know 
where the mayflower hides its pink buds, or 
the maiden-hair spreads its delicate green, I 
dare not breathe the secret to my dearest 
friend. I pursue the most roundabout paths 
to reach the charmed spot, watching, like a 
guilty thing, lest my steps should be dogged. 
And when people say, '* O, how lovely ! where 
did you get it.'*" I conscientiously direct them 
so that they can never find the place. 

It is true that many wild-flowers, if properly 
moved, bloom and thrive in the garden ; but 
their charm is gone. They not only seem to 
lose their native modesty and grace among 
the flaunting garden-flowers, but their sur- 
roundings, the protecting old trees, the moss- 
grown stumps, the trailing vines, and all the 
green things that run riot in the forest are 



A DYING RACE. 67 

wanting. And the poor little strangers re- 
mind one of Emerson's captured sparrow : — 

** He sings the song, but it pleases not now, 
For I did not bring home the river and sky ; — 
He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye." 

Now most of our native flowers may be 
easily coaxed back to the woods and groves, 
and we have many parks and shaded pleasure- 
grounds where they will grow luxuriantly. 
This experiment has been tried with perfect 
success at Bussey Institute, near Boston ; and 
the beautiful Bussey forest is gladly carpeting 
itself with wild-flowers, as if hoping their fresh 
innocence will cover up the stain upon its 
guilty heart. Most of these plants need no 
special preparation of soil, and once started 
take care of themselves. With our own wild- 
flowers we can plant many beautiful Western 
species, and even those of other lands may be 
naturalized in our woods. The roots or seeds 
of the best hardy exotics may be easily pro- 
cured, and will thrive in our northern climate 



68 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

as well as native plants. Thus our wild or 
partly cultivated places can be made attrac- 
tive with very little trouble. The exquisite 
water-lily may be planted in bogs and ponds, 
and on the margins the marsh marigolds, the 
*' winking Mary buds " of Shakespeare, will 
"ope their golden eyes." While in dryer spots 
the columbine and anemones, wild roses and 
harebells, the bloodroot, Solomon's seal, and 
an endless variety of our neglected wood- 
flowers will take root and make the desert- 
places bloom with beauty. 

The prevailing ignorance about even our 
simplest plants is almost incredible. A lady 
who lived in a rural town once declared that 
none of her gentlemen friends knew what a 
potato-blossom was. This assertion being 
treated with scorn, she filled a vase with the 
blossoms and presented it to her brothers, who 
had hoed potato-hills all their lives, but could 
not guess what these strange flowers were. 
Not content with this test, the same lady 



A DYING RACE, 69 

actually went to an evening party with potato- 
blossoms in her hair. The pretty purple and 
white flowers were much admired, and nobody 
suspected their ignominious origin. Not long 
since, a gentleman of wealth and taste nursed 
in his conservatory what he supposed a rare 
plant. Everybody admired the delicate green 
foliage drooping over the pot, but no one 
could tell what it was, till an old farmer, with 
a hearty laugh, revealed the secret. It was 
the common chickweed ! 

Unfortunately the ancient traditions which 
throw an added charm over so many of the 
English wild-flowers w^e must do without, or 
take at second-hand. Moreover, we are not a 
sentimental people, and we cherish neither 
ruins nor traditions. An Englishman plucks 
the common dog rose, and remembers that 
he holds in his hand the military badge of the 
doomed houses of Lancaster and York. No 
fragrant romances cluster about our own wild- 
roses ; indeed, we are apt to consider ourselves 



JO SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

fortunate if that fashionable epidemic known 
as " rose cold " allows us to gather them at all ! 
The forget-me-not, according to Miss Strick- 
land, was first used as a parting token by a 
royal hand, that of a Plantagenet ; while the 
very name of that famous race of kings is 
said to have been taken from the common 
broom, the Plantagenista. But though no 
associations with royalty endear our native 
flowers to our democratic hearts, the Indians 
have left us a few legends, and we can make 
the floral histories, myths, and traditions of all 
other lands our own. In our country strolls 
we shall give a second look at the fragrant 
white clover, if we remember it is the far- 
famed shamrock of Ireland. The ox-eyed 
daisy, which our maidens call Margiterite, the 
abhorred whiteweed of the farmer, gains new 
importance in our eyes when we reflect that 
the European daisy was the favorite device of 
the unhappy Margaret of Anjou, and that it 
was worn in the hair and embroidered upon 



A DYING RACE. 7 1 

the robes of the maids of honor, as our field 
daisy is now worn by modern belles. 

No one disputes the services done by plants 
to man in the way of food, or medicine, or 
clothing. The belief in the medicinal virtues 
of certain herbs is common, and there are old 
women who still make "diet drinks," prepare 
yearly conserves of rose-leaves, and rejoice in 
elderberry wine ; though the elder-bush was 
probably never planted before houses in this 
country to keep off witches, unless in the 
troublous times of the Salem witchcraft ! 
But the good done by the mere beauty of the 
wayside flowers is not so easily computed. 
Who shall say how many wanderers have been 
guided to heaven by these '' stars of earth " ? 
The Flower Missions do their best work in 
bringing the blossoms of the woods and fields, 
from the buttercups and violets of early spring 
to the asters and golden-rod of autumn, into 
the close wards of the hospitals. 

The sweet violets may deck our meadows 



J2 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

and the golden-rod hang its rich tassels from 
the roadside for ages to come. But the shy- 
woodland flowers are melting away before the 
inroads of civilization, like those ruder abo- 
rigines, the Indians. Before they completely 
vanish, can we not intercept their flight and 
bid them stay.^ It will cost a little money, a 
little labor, and — hardest of all, O country- 
men and lovers ! — a little time. But we shall 
save a dying race ; and lo ! future generations 
will rise up and call us blessed. 




THE MASSACRE OF THE INNO- 
CENTS. 

^^'F a stranger to modern ways of doing 
^^ things should stroll through our North- 
ern cities during the winter months, he might 
well ask, " Did not the birds go South last 
year ? " For wherever he could turn, some 
bright-winged bird would meet his puzzled 
eye. In all variety of plumage, from the 
gaudy colors of the tropics to sombre brown 
and gray, these '^ children of the air" flit 
through our streets. The scarlet tanager 
has forgotten his sunny Southern haunts, the 
indigo-bird bravely faces our icy blasts, and 
even those delicate little fairies, the hum- 
ming-birds, have not deserted us. But, alas ! 
these brilliant visions are only ghosts of 
4 



74 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

birds, mute warblers, little captives deprived 
of life and light and song. The outspread 
wings have lost their magic power, and the 
little feet, instead of clasping some swaying 
bough, have been hopelessly entangled in 
meshes of velvet and lace. Here, there, and 
everywhere the same strange phenomenon 
has been visible. At least every other woman 
on the street has worn a hat surmounted by 
a bird, or by an ingenious patchwork affair 
which reminds one of the insect manufactured 
to puzzle Professor Agassiz. Tall women and 
short w^omen, richly dressed women and shab- 
bily dressed women, little girls and big girls, 
have decorated themselves with these spoils 
of the forest. Not only in the street, but in 
the ball-room, on head-dresses and in the hair, 
these feathered ornaments have been worn ; 
so that " a fashionable lady's coiffure," to quote 
a recent Paris letter, '' has furnished material 
for a naturalist's study." Have the little 
songsters committed some unpardonable mis- 



THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. 75 

demeanor, that this edict of death has gone 
forth, or has popular opinion decreed that the 
groves are no longer the fitting haunts of 
birds, and that their proper nestling-place is 
a woman's hat ? 

To be sure, the custom of wearing feathers 
can boast of respectable antiquity, for even 
the nimble god Mercury wore a cap with 
wings. Savages have decorated themselves 
with the tufts and plumes of birds from time 
immemorial, but they have been influenced 
by deeper reasons than the love of display. 
The battle-field had no terrors for the natives 
of Nev^^ Guinea when they wore the skins 
of " God's bird," — the bird-of-paradise. The 
American Indians believed that all the good 
qualities of certain birds were bestowed upon 
the wearer of their feathers. But a bird on 
a woman's hat to-day has but one meaning, 
and that is vanity. Wallace, in the account 
of his travels in the Malay Archipelago, says 
the natives were deeply puzzled to know why 



yS SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

he preserved so many birds and insects. At 
length they arrived at a solution of the 
mystery, and an old man, with an air of pro- 
found conviction, exclaimed, " They all come 
to life again : that 's what they do, — they all 
come to life again ! " 

I see a beautiful bird perched on the crown 
of a woman's hat, with bent head and out- 
spread wings ; its whole poise is suggestive 
of the famous blackbird in the nursery rhyme ; 
and if the little victim before me should 
"come to life again" and take a similar re- 
venge, I should not be surprised. If a woman 
must wear a bird, why does she not show a 
little taste in her selection, and choose one 
whose appearance will harmonize somewhat 
with her own t Why do meek little maidens 
overshadow themselves with "winged flames" 
from tropical wilds, and stalwart matrons affect 
the dainty humming-birds } Fashion delights 
to set all the laws gf nature at defiance, but 
she never showed more plainly her ignorance 



THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. // 

of the fitness of things than when she took 
the birds from their native haunts and perched 
their Hfeless bodies upon the heads of our 
mothers and sisters and daughters. 

But in comparison with other aspects of 
the subject, the mere question of good or bad 
taste is of little account. That the fashion 
of using birds for ornament is a cruel one, 
probably never entered the minds of most 
women. When our fashionable ladies or fair 
young girls stand before a counter covered 
with rich plumes and stuffed birds of rare 
beauty, do they pause to think how many 
joyous lives were sacrificed, how many happy 
woodland homes destroyed, how many gushes 
of song stilled forever, that they might deck 
themselves with these colors stolen from the 
woods and fields and shores } Unfortunately 
this fashion is not confined to the cities. 
Many young women who live in the country 
persuade their brothers or friends to shoot 
every bright-winged bird they see. These 



y8 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

are easily preserved without the aid of the 
taxidermist ; and when the ruthless winds 
blow off the head or tail of one little victim, 
another is ready to take its place. Yet these 
very women have tender hearts, and would 
shrink from inflicting needless pain on any 
creature, had not love of ''style" blinded their 
eyes. The number of birds sacrificed to this 
senseless custom has caused an alarming 
diminution of some of our most beautiful spe- 
cies ; and in certain localities the indigo-bird, 
and other birds of bright plumage, are almost 
extinct. The apostles of dress-reform might 
find here a worthy field for their efforts, for 
it rests with women alone whether this cruel 
custom shall be abandoned or perpetuated. 

The value of the smaller birds to mankind 
is a truth not yet fully recognized, or, if 
generally known, it is everywhere disregarded. 
Longfellow's poem, "The Birds of Killing- 
worth," gives a truthful description of what 
has happened in many places both here and 



THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS, 79 

across the sea, where a " St. Bartholomew of 
birds" has been inaugurated only to be fol- 
lowed by the most disastrous consequences. 
Happily the days when farmers made a busi- 
ness of killing the ''winged wardens" of their 
orchards and grain-fields have gone by. The 
annual shooting-matches of the rural districts, 
when each party strove to destroy the largest 
number of wild creatures, have, to a great 
extent, been abolished ; and the accounts of 
the immense bird-hunts, like that which oc- 
curred in North Bridgewater, Massachusetts, 
in 1820, where the birds were killed off in 
such quantities that cart-loads of them were 
sold to the farmers for fertilizing the soil, seem 
now like some pitiful tale of fiction. Yet in 
all parts of the country for the last few years 
there has been a steady decrease in the num- 
ber of birds. A speedy retribution follows 
when the nicely balanced laws of nature are 
disturbed. Those deadly enemies of vegeta- 
tion, the hosts of devouring insects, are upon 



80 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

US, and new species are constantly appearing. 
If we consider the astonishing rate at which 
insects multiply, we shall better understand 
these rapid inroads. Reaumur says that one 
of those little pests known as plant-lice or 
aphides may become the progenitor of six 
thousand miUions in one season. This mar- 
vellous power of reproduction may well make 
us tremble. A careful writer on this subject 
estimates the annual loss from destruction of 
property by insects in the United States to 
amount to four hundred millions of dollars, 
and to this devastation he attributes the high 
price of farm produce, and the increase of 
distress and want in our large cities. At 
least one eighth of this loss might be avoided, 
he declares, by the careful protection of birds. 
Innumerable instances might be given of 
important services thus rendered by birds in 
different parts of the world. Michelet says 
one pair of sparrows carries to the nest 4,300 
•caterpillars in a week; and, according to 



THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. 8 1 

Audubon, a woodcock will eat its own weight 
of insects in a single night. A titmouse in- 
troduced into a conservatory has been known 
to cleanse, in a few hours, rose-bushes which 
were infested with thousands of the aphides. 
If the birds are banished or annihilated, shall 
we not be at the mercy of these myriads of 
destroyers ? Even now what suffering is 
caused at the West by the ravages of grass- 
hoppers ! The devices of man are of little 
avail, our deadly poisons are wofully insuffi- 
cient, and sooner or later we are forced to 
imitate our sharp-shooters in the late war, and 
"pick off the enemy one by one." How much 
more effectually the birds would do it for us ! 

Multitudes of birds are yearly killed for 
scientific purposes and for public and private 
collections. Only a short time ago a gentle- 
man returned from Arizona with a thousand 
bird-skins for the Smithsonian Institution. 
With all due reverence for science, it must be 
conceded that naturalists are not as scrupulous 

4* ' F 



82 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

about taking life or inflicting pain as they 
might be. Few of them are as humane as our 
own Thoreau, who told an ornithologist, who 
insisted upon holding his bird in his hand, 
that he would rather hold it in his affections. 
Many people who do not aspire to possess 
collections of birds contrive to ornament their 
rooms with single specimens. Which is more 
painful, to see a winged creature shut up in 
a cage, or to discover these lifeless ornaments, 
poor effigies of birds, perched upon the picture- 
frames, hidden under glass cases on the man- 
tel, or perhaps sitting on their rifled nests, 
which have been transported, branches and 
all, to the parlor.'^ Leonardo da Vinci bought 
singing-birds in cages merely to set them free. 
In these days of cheap and beautiful pictures 
and statuettes, among the variety of small 
ornaments to be had almost for the asking, 
can we not emancipate the birds t 

Birds are even more desperately pursued for 
their flesh than for their plumage. Audubon 



THE MASSACRE OF THE IiYNOCENTS. 83 

says that when he first went to Kentucky the 
pinnated grouse was so abundant that no 
hunter deigned to shoot it. Twenty-five years 
later the grouse had abandoned the State. 
Prairie-chickens are now slaughtered in such 
quantities at the West that there is reason to 
fear the shy, pretty creatures will soon be 
exterminated. Men hunt them with trained 
dogs, kill all they can, and wastefuUy throw 
away all of the bird but the breast. At a 
prize hunt in Minnesota last summer nine 
hundred prairie-chickens were killed in a day 
within the area of one township. The 
passenger pigeon, now rarely seen in the 
Eastern States, once bred in Massachusetts 
woods, and the ruffed grouse and several 
species of wild ducks were abundant in the 
same State. The bird-laws are as stringent 
as the prohibitory law, and quite as effectual. 
The abominable snares and traps, the deadly 
broadsides from batteries and pivot-guns, the 
ingenuity of sportsmen, who by their decoys 



84 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

and mock-whistles lure whole flocks of birds 
within rifle range, have done their work, and 
we doubt whether posterity will ever hear of 
" quail on toast," or know the flavor of wood- 
cock or grouse. Game is yearly diminishing 
in Europe as well as in this country, and it is 
only within recent years that protection has 
been secured there for the small birds, which 
have been attacked and slaughtered with 
ferocious zeal. Italy, whose delightful climate 
attracts many species of birds, has been de- 
scribed as '' that land of song where a man no 
sooner hears a feathered warbler sing than he 
desires to shoot and eat it.'* It is said that a 
veteran Italian hunter is as proud of a string 
of dead linnets as any English boy of his first 
bag of grouse. The ancient Romans — poor 
benighted heathen! — feasted on flamingoes' 
tongues and the brains of pheasants and 
peacocks. But in this era of the world, in 
the boasted nineteenth century, man, who is 
a little lower than the angels, sits down to a 



THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. 85 

banquet of thrushes, eats the lark which at 
heaven's gate sings, even devours the nightin- 
gale ! Mrs. Somerville, in her '* Personal Recol- 
lections/' speaks of a gentleman who won her 
heart at a dinner-party in Rome by crying 
out, " What, robins, — our household birds ! I 
would as soon eat a child." 

Foolish superstition has caused the destruc- 
tion of many useful birds, such as the chimney- 
swallow and whippoorwill, which have been 
considered birds of ill omen. Then, too, the 
birds which go South often perish in large 
numbers on 'their perilous journeys. "The 
eagle waits on his crag ; man watches in 
the valley." The lighthouses, which save so 
many human lives, are terribly fatal to the 
birds, which are killed by flying against the 
thick glass of the lantern. Mrs. Thaxter tells 
us that three hundred and seventy-five dead 
birds have been picked up in one morning at 
the foot of the lighthouse tower on the Isles 
of Shoals. 



86 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

Thus it certainly seems as if the whole race 
of birds were doomed. Few people besides 
naturalists know what interesting and intelli- 
gent little creatures they are, how wonderfully 
organized, how delicately susceptible to joy 
and pain. ''I turn this thrush in my hand," 
writes a lover of birds ; '* I remember its 
strange ways, the curious look it gave me, its 
ineffable music, its freedom, and its ecstasy, 
and I tremble lest I have slain a being diviner 
than myself." The wide-spread belief that 
birds and animals were created only for the 
use and amusement of man is a doctrine 
unworthy of Christendom. The whale, otter, 
and seal have been so relentlessly pursued 
that they are fast disappearing. In Europe 
an oyster famine is predicted, for that favorite 
bivalve has been "dredged to death." The 
w^holesale slaughter of buffaloes on the West- 
ern plains is another instance of our folly and 
reckless waste of life. The penguin, which is 
valued for its oil, is chased by small vessels 



THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS, 8/ 

fitted out for that purpose, and these vessels 
take, upon an average, three hundred thousand 
penguins each. The pursuit of this bird is 
compared to that of the wingless auk, and the 
same fate is predicted for it, — that of utter 
extinction. " Birds are given for the use of 
man," says a well-known sportsman's book, 
" and if they serve to supply him with food or 
healthful exercise, they have answered their 
purpose." O heartless and godless creed ! 
Let us go to the East and learn a lesson of 
heathen nations. The instinctive tenderness 
and reverence felt by the Orientals for life in 
any form is to many the great charm of the 
East. The Buddhists established hospitals for 
sick animals, and the Egyptians saw something 
divine in all living things. The same kindly 
spirit prompts the people of Sweden and Nor- 
way to place sheaves of barley and oats on 
high poles before the houses at Christmas- 
time, that the birds too may have a feast. 
For our own sake, for the sake of all man- 



88 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

kind, let us spare our benefactors the birds ! 
The grace and beauty of their forms and 
plumage we can never recreate ; their exqui- 
site melodies we cannot imitate ; the secret 
of their flight baffles all the ingenuity of man. 
Instead of living as if their chief mission were 
to torture and destroy, let earth-bound mor- 
tals look with awe and reverence upon winged 
life, — that *' strange, delicate, mighty dream 
of God." 




PASSENGER PIGEONS. 



fp^'OR many days the fresh morning air 
1^^ had resounded with the dull bummino: 



of the prairie-chickens, and an unbroken line 
of snowy "schooners," as the emigrant-wagons 
are called on the prairies, had slowly moved 
westward. These wagons were followed by 
droves of cattle ; and the cattle were driven 
by brown, dusty women, barefooted, and scant- 
ily clothed in blue drilling or patched and 
faded chintz. I had looked curiously at the 
labor-saving churns in which butter was made 
by the mere motion of the jolting wagons ; I 
had questioned the rough-looking Germans 
and Norwegians, who often could not speak a 
word of English ; and I was never weary of 



90 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

watching for the bright eyes of the dingy-faced 
little children, who sometimes peeped from the 
wagons. When these weary travellers halted 
by the wayside, and their gypsy fires blazed 
out into the night, what wild sweet singing 
was borne across the prairie on the evening 
breeze ! 

But one day I forgot my slow-plodding 
friends, in the excitement of watching the 
passage of a multitude of travellers who could 
no more be numbered than the sands upon 
the sea-shore. What a commotion the shy 
strangers made that early May morning! I 
was startled from sleep by a voice crying, 
" The pigeons ! " and a strange sound, like the 
rushing of a strong wind, came to my ears. 
The air was full of flying birds, and for hours 
I watched the immense flock pass over that 
little prairie village in Minnesota. The birds 
flew very low, and hundreds of them alighted 
on the trees in passing. They often alight in 
such numbers that great branches are broken 



PASSENGER PIGEONS, 9 1 

off, and sometimes the pigeons are crushed to 
death. The fields bordering the river were 
covered with them ; but they only stopped to 
rest, apparently, or perhaps to pick up a little 
food, and were again on the wing. As these 
detachments of the vast army of pigeons rose 
from the ground, with a great flapping of 
wings, others alighted ; meanwhile the main 
flock was passing steadily over our heads. 
The procession seemed endless, for the day 
wore on, and still the swift-winged birds 
rustled through the air, and still the coming 
flocks looked like delicate pencillings on the 
distant sky. It was a rare day for sportsmen. 
Instead of roosting in a neighboring forest, as 
we had hoped, the pigeons flew over into 
Wisconsin. But every day through the sum- 
mer stray flocks foraged among the oak groves 
about us, and their shadows swept over sunny 
slopes and fields of waving grain, like flitting 
clouds. 

From their nesting-place the birds flew all 



92 • SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

over Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin in quest 
of food ; but they always returned as the sun 
went down, though the roost was hundreds of 
miles distant. Audubon says that these pig- 
eons travel at the rate of a mile in* a minute, 
and that if one of them were to follow the 
fashion, and take a trip to Europe, it could 
cross the ocean in less than three days. When 
they fly through the woods, the sound of their 
wings is almost deafening ; an old farmer com- 
pares it to the roar of ten thousand threshing- 
machines ! But quite as wonderful as their 
speed is the great power of vision these birds 
possess. As they journey through space, they 
can overlook hundreds of acres at once, and 
their sharp eyes can discover at a glance 
whether the country beneath them is barren, 
or supplied with the food they need. The 
piece of woods that the pigeons selected in 
which to rear their young is three or four 
miles wide and ten miles long. Their nests 
were in every tree ; sometimes more than fifty 



PASSENGER PIGEONS. 93 

nests could be seen in one tree. In each of 
these frail nests, carelessly woven of a few 
twigs, two white shining eggs were laid. 

When the young pigeons or squabs are 
almost ready to fly, comes the exciting time 
known as robbing the roost. Men arm them- 
selves with long poles, with which they upset 
the nests ; the poor squabs fall to the ground, 
and are easily caught in large numbers. 
They can then be kept in cages, fattened, and 
killed as they are wanted. 

The passenger pigeon does not migrate from 
one part of the country to another to find a 
warmer climate, but only in search of food. 
So many of these birds are killed every year, 
for the New York and other markets, that it 
seems as if they must gradually disappear. 
But they multiply very rapidly, and Audubon 
thought that nothing but the destruction of 
our forests could lessen their number. 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 




ERTAIN persons are forever wailing 
over the lost virtues of the past, and 
shaking their wise heads over the ruinous 
customs and habits of to-day. Now, when it 
is becoming to recall the doings and sayings 
of our forefathers, let us look the truth in 
the face. 

In the first place, we are often reminded 
that our ancestors *' rose with the lark, and 
w^ith the lark to bed." No doubt this was 
true in the first youth of the Colonies. The 
worthy citizens of New Amsterdam retired 
at sundown, and in New England the nine- 
o'clock bell was a signal few marauders dared 
disobey. If the ''head" of a family had the 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 95 

hardihood to be out after that time, he was 
supposed to be lost, and the minister was 
aroused from his slumbers to go in search 
of the missing man. Even in fashionable 
society the orthodox hour was not always 
despised ; for at a New-Year's levee given by 
Mrs. Washington in 1790, when the clock 
struck nine the hostess remarked, with that 
courageous truthfulness which distinguished 
her husband's boyhood, '' The General always 
retires at nine, and I usually precede him." 
Whereupon all the guests at once took leave. 
Mrs.*Washington's usual receptions, however, 
lasted from eight till ten; but later hours 
were not unknown even at an earlier date 
than this. We find an allusion in Irving's 
"Life of Washington" to a custom prevailing 
in Maryland when the roads were too rough 
for carriages, and ladies rode on ponies, fol- 
lowed by servants in livery : " In this way 
the young ladies from the country used to 
come to balls at Annapolis, riding with their 



96 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

hoops arranged ' fore and aft>' like lateen-sails ; 
and after dancing all night, ride home again 
in the morning." At an entertainment given 
in Philadelphia by the French minister at the 
close of the war, the dancing began at half 
past eight, and supper was served at twelve. 
And a favorite amusement of the young Phil- 
adelphians was driving to the fashionable 
resort called Gray's Inn, on the banks of the 
Schuylkill, and there dancing till morning. 

It was not the custom in fashionable so- 
ciety for bridal couples to take wedding trips ; 
but the bride was expected to receive*hcr 
friends daily for four successive weeks. What 
an infliction this would be considered by 
modern belles ! A knowledge of heraldry 
was then considered indispensable by most 
aristocratic ladies and gentlemen. Music was 
not w^holly neglected, for before the Revolu- 
tion Mrs. Washington ordered from London, 
together with a "puckered petticoat of a fash- 
ionable color, 2 handsome breast-flowers, hair- 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, 97 

pins, sugar candy, — a Book of newest and 
best Songs, set to music for the spinnet." 

There was a great passion for gambling 
among both sexes, though it was generally 
agreed that no one should play for money dur- 
ing the war. The Philadelphia ladies boasted 
that they could entertain company by con- 
versation, while their New York sisters were 
obliged to resort to card-tables at their social 
gatherings. But it is said that when the first 
winter Congress was in session in Philadel- 
phia, it was no unusual thing for a man or 
woman to lose three or four hundred dollars 
in one evening. 

Whist-clubs flourished even in New Eng- 
land, and their members gave elaborate din- 
ners, at which much wine and punch were 
consumed. After dinner cards were played 
till near midnight, when it was the fashion to 
indulge again in the flowing bowl. Indeed, 
the punch-bowl held a very conspicuous posi- 
tion in the homes and affections of our fathers. 
5 G 



98 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

And it was not confined to the haunts of the 
free-hearted Southerners or the pleasure-lov- 
ing New-Yorkers, but figured largely in the 
land of the Puritans. We may suppose that 
*'aqua vitae" did not flow very freely during 
the first struggle of the little colonies for life, 
for Longfellow tells us that the master of the 
Mayflower was 

"Glad to be gone from a land of sand and sickness and 
sorrow, 
Short allowance of victual, and plenty of nothing but 
Gospel." 

But in after-years, whatever privations and 
hardships were encountered, there was at 
least a generous allowance of rum, and dis- 
tilleries were scattered broadcast. The Puri- 
tans, with their severe code of morals, their 
dreaded whipping-posts and pillories, and their 
propensity for hanging Quakers and witches, 
thus countenanced a custom which was to 
bring untold miseries upon their descendants. 
Those who could not afford to give dinner 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 99 

and card parties yet had their mahogany side- 
boards well stocked with "strong water," and 
the customary greeting to a visitor was, 
"What will you take?" 

Twice a day, at eleven and four, farmers 
sent their little sons to carry rum to the 
workmen in the field, and it would have been 
considered very cruel not to give the washer- 
woman her morning tumbler of rum. When 
frame houses were built, the whole settlement 
was expected to assist in the raising, and no 
building could be erected without rum. In 
a certain village in Maine, in 1794, "it was 
voted to get one barrel of good West India 
rum and one hundred pounds of maple-sugar, 
to be used at the raising of the meeting- 
house." It was a common practice, down to 
a comparatively recent date, to sell town pau- 
pers at public auction to those who would 
agree to support them at the lowest price, 
and in some towns a glass of rum was be- 
stowed upon each person who would under- 



100 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

bid his predecessor. On '' training-days " the 
whole population assembled on the village 
green, and after prayer had been offered by 
the parson standing on the church steps, the 
company was marched to the tavern and 
dismissed, when a general carousing ensued. 
Men drank till they were hopelessly intoxi- 
cated; boys drained the dregs from the emptied 
pails ; and, almost too shocking to recall, "lit- 
tle children sucked the grass where the liquor 
fell/' On other days men and boys went to 
the tavern for their '' eleven-o'clock," and on 
election days there were plenty of ''liquor 
fights." And at husking-bees and other rustic 
merry-makings the supper-tables were laden 
not only with pumpkin-pies, doughnuts, and 
gingerbread, but with bottles of porter and 
wine and jugs of distilled spirits. 

Even the clergy shared to some extent in 
the general dissipation. ''The practice of 
card-playing, late hours, and drinking received 
too much encouragement from those who took 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 1 01 

the lead in social circles," writes an old New 
England chronicler, " and it was a great rec- 
ommendation of a newly settled minister that 
he was free from these immoralities. Doubt- 
less many of these pleasure-loving parsons 
would have offered the same excuse which 
was given by Cooper's New York divine, when 
reproved for attending cock-fights : " There 
are so few amusements for people of education 
in this country." 

And indeed we must bear in mind that this 
was before the day of lecture bureaus and 
lyceums, that books were scarce, the theatre 
forbidden, and music, except that of the fife 
and drum, almost unknown. The Southern 
planters lived in luxurious idleness upon their 
great estates, devoted to the chase and the 
race-ground, and served by scores of negroes. 
The fashionables of the cities enjoyed their 
card-parties and routs, while the country folk 
resorted to tea-parties and quiltings. Tea-par- 
ties began at three o'clock and ended at sun- 



I02 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

set ; a great deal of knitting was done in the 
mean time, and a deal of gossiping as well. 
For in the absence of all our ingenious devices 
for killing time, even such exciting games as 
battledoor and shuttlecock being confined to 
the cities, it was natural that the faintest 
rumor should be made much of The grave 
Quakers, however, gave no countenance to 
this foible, but held themselves aloof from 
their scandal-loving neighbors. Politics raged, 
then and afterward, with a bitterness now un- 
known. Unpopular candidates were burned 
in eflfigy, members of opposing parties scarcely 
recognized each other, and excited political 
discussions were the order of the day. It 
would be well for us to remember that even 
in those days public men were criticised and 
distrusted. The daughter of John Adams, 
after dining with several members of Con- 
gress in New York in 1788, wrote to her 
mother : " If you had been present you would 
have trembled for your country, to have seen, 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, 103 

heard, and observed the men who are its 
rulers. Very different they were, I beUeve, 
in times past." 

Many of the clergy took a leading part in 
politics, and in 181 2 the administration was 
fearlessly denounced from pulpits all over 
New England. 

There was then no sympathy between 
churches of different creeds, and no exchange 
of pulpits. Sunday was a solemn day, when 
if a man took a walk or any innocent recrea- 
tion, he was liable to be put in the stocks and 
saluted with a shower of eggs. This sombre 
day was always dreaded by children, who 
were obliged to conduct their small persons 
with the strictest propriety. Some of the 
most bigoted went so far as to pronounce 
flowers in children's hands *' a dreadful wicked 
thing on the Lord's Day." Their only diver- 
sion during the long service was to count the 
tassels on the pulpit drapery. Boy-nature 
sometimes rebelled, and I know of one ur- 



104 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

chin who caught a mouse at noon ^^ between 
meetings/' and carried the little prisoner to 
church in his handkerchief to play with dur- 
ing the service. As the services lasted sev- 
eral hours, no wonder constables with long 
wands were required, in the early days of the 
Colonies, to keep people awake. Afterwards, 
men and women took sprigs of fennel, which 
were supposed to answer the same purpose. 

But the long sermons could be endured 
better than the almost endless prayers; for 
standing so long was wearisome to the flesh, 
and children occasionally fell asleep and 
dropped down, while young women often 
fainted and were carried out of church. To 
be sure, it was sometimes whispered that the 
latter impropriety was owing quite as much 
to tight lacing as to the long prayers. 

A certain venerable author, who looks back 
to the close of the last century, remarks that 
people were then poor in spirit and hungered 
for the bread of life, unlike their descendants, 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 105 

who attend church to exhibit their costly- 
wardrobes. But women of the old time were 
accused of the same sin. The Abbe Robin, 
a chaplain in Rochambeau's army during the 
Revolution, wrote, *' Piety is not the only mo- 
tive that induces American women to be con- 
stant in their attendance at church. Having 
no places of public amusement, no fashionable 
promenades, they go to church to display their 
fine dresses." 

Instrumental music was banished from 
churches as a device of the Evil One, and 
the choir singing was fearfully and wonder- 
fully performed. We may judge of the high 
esteem in which sacred music — that is, the 
singing of hymns — was held, from the re- 
marks made by an old Connecticut pastor 
from his pulpit : *' I have come into this 
meeting a great many times, and I saw that 
the devil was here. I wished to begin ser- 
vice, but I did not like to introduce the wor- 
ship of God when the devil was in the people. 



I06 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

I took up the Psalm Book and read, but I 
could see him skipping about from pew to 
pew in the gallery. But the instant the chor- 
ister got up and blew the pitch-pipe he quit, 
and all was sobriety and decorum among the 
young people and children." 

Fires being considered unnecessary in 
olden times, even when the mercury was 
below zero, the minister was often obliged 
to muffle himself to the chin. A few ladies 
indulged in foot-stoves, but the majority of 
church-goers prided themselves upon being 
superior to such weaknesses. In " Peter Par- 
ley's Recollections " there is an account of a 
bitter stove war which was waged only fifty 
years ago between two parties in a village 
church, led by the wives of the deacons. The 
effeminate plan for the introduction of stoves 
was desperately opposed, but the stove party 
finally conquered. The first Sunday after the 
stoves were put in the leader of the defeated 
party fainted, owing, she explained, "to the 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 10/ 

heat of those awful stoves." Fancy her cha- 
grin when informed that, it being a mild day, 
no fires had been kindled ! 

Indeed, in the low temperatures in which 
our respected ancestors lived, moved, and had 
their being, the cheerfulness with which they 
endured the chill blasts of a Northern winter 
is almost incredible. To be sure, there were 
few thermometers then to tell how cold it was. 
But the dwelling-houses offered numberless 
chinks and crannies for the north-wind to 
penetrate, and the immense wood-fires heated 
the chimneys and burned people's faces, while 
their backs were in Nova Zembla. Time has 
invested those great open fires with a roman- 
tic interest, and fancy loves to play about the 
shining hearth and revel in the dancing 
flames. We moderns build mimic fireplaces, 
and go to the ends of the earth to obtain a 
pair of old-fashioned brass andirons ; then we 
sit before the cheery little blaze, and think 
what sensible old fellows our grandfathers 



I08 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

were. But we take extremely good care to 
have the furnace fires blazing away at the 
same time. The fires in the parlors of New 
England houses were rarely lighted, and no- 
body dreamed of warm sleeping-rooms. Why, 
the very mention of such a weakness would 
have excited the derision of a whole commu- 
nity. The awful solemnity of the parlor, with 
its straight-backed, hard-seated chairs, was 
only equalled by that of the '' best chamber," 
with its great mausoleum of a bed hung round 
with dreary canopies, and its walls adorned 
with ebony profiles of the departed. Did you 
ever, O lover of the past, grope shivering to 
bed by the light of a tallow candle in that 
best room, in the depth of a New England 
winter ? 

But if we do not sigh for "grandmothers' 
houses," we must at least do justice to the 
women who lived in them. For they were 
''mighty at the spinning-wheel," manufac- 
tured their own household linen, knit as in- 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 109 

defatigably as Madame De Farge, and made 
the most wonderful patchwork quilts. They 
were also skilled in fine embroidery, and 
wrought lace collars ; and it is said the wife 
and beautiful daughters of President Edwards 
painted fans, and sent them to Boston for 
sale. The Dutch maidens of New Amster- 
dam in early times manufactured their own 
numberless linsey-woolsey petticoats, and the 
wardrobe of a lady was her only fortune. 
Then the best room, if we may credit Knick- 
erbocker's reliable history, was hung round 
with homespun garments instead of paintings. 
It is hard to believe ; but even in that age 
of republican simplicity the wise and observ- 
ing complained of the degenerate times, and 
looked wistfully back to a better past. A 
story is told of a family living in colonial 
times, whose extravagant habits excited the 
alarm of the village. '' For the eldest son 
got a pair of boots, the second an overcoat, 
the third a watch, and the fourth a pair of 



no SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

shoe-buckles ; and the neighbors all shook 
their heads, and whispered to each other, 
*That family is on the high-road to insol- 
vency.' " 

Legislation in New England tried to re- 
strain extravagance in dress, and laws were 
passed against wearing laces, embroidery, 
needlework caps, and " immoderate great 
sleeves." It was against the law in the prin- 
cipal colonies for any one to indulge in per- 
sonal finery who could not afford it. An old 
Virginia statute ran thus : " It is permitted 
to none but the Council and Heads of Hun- 
dreds to wear gold in their clothes, or to wear 
silk till they make it themselves." And a 
law of Massachusetts declared: "All persons 
not worth two hundred pounds wearing gold 
or silver lace, or button or blue lace above 
two shillings per yard, or silk hoods or scarfs, 
may be presented by the grand jury, and shall 
pay ten shillings for every offence. Every 
person who dresses above his rank may be 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, 1 1 1 

assessed at two hundred pounds." If these 
hws were enforced now, what a stripping off 
of finery there would be, and how many of 
us would come to grief! 

A century later we find people making 
much the same complaints, and quoting " good 
old colony times." " The inhabitants prefer 
the splendor of wealth and the show of en- 
joyment to a simplicity of manners and the 
pure pleasures resulting therefrom," wrote M. 
Brissot de Warville, who landed in America 
in 1788; and he lamented that in republics 
women should sacrifice so much time to trifles. 
Noting the increase of bachelors, he said, 
" The expense of women causes matrimony to 
be dreaded by men." Take courage, maidens 
of 1 876 ! Your grandmothers, who wore gowns 
woven and dyed by themselves, were also 
slandered. Ah ! my dears, if we could have 
peeped into a village ball-room in New England 
one hundred years ago, think you we should 
have seen beauty unadorned, arrayed in simple 



112 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

homespun alone? On the contrar}^ we should 
have seen all varieties of costume, from home- 
made linen and muslin gowns elaborately em- 
broidered with the needle, to stiff brocades 
and damasks. Long trains were worn ; here 
and there some daring lady sported a hoop ; 
and the tallow candles, stuck in wooden blocks 
upon the walls, threw their dim rays upon 
the inevitable necklace of gold beads. The 
hair was frizzed, puffed, and powdered, ar- 
ranged in towering coiffures surmounted by 
feathers or turbans, and ornamented with gilt 
and brass clasps. But these motley gather- 
ings were faint reflections of the splendor of 
city assemblies, where ladies wore diamonds 
in their hair, and gold spangles upon their 
crape and velvet dresses, and where in the 
stately measures of the dance these old time 
beauties *' panted and puffed at the risk of 
breaking their whalebone prisons, or sinking 
under their heavy brocades." 

The demand for hair-dressers was often so 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. II3 

great, before a large party, that many ladies 
were obliged to have their heads dressed be- 
fore five or six o'clock in the morning. (This 
was one of the occasions on which they rose 
with the lark.) And the dresses worn by the 
belles of the Revolution were so low-necked 
as to excite the surprise of a French critic, 
who was " scandalized at this indecency among 
republicans." 

The shoes were of the same material as the 
dress, often skilfully embroidered. Country 
girls sometimes carried the broadcloth shoes 
with peaked toes in their hands till they got 
to church ; but the pink satin and yellow 
brocade shoes of city maidens were supported 
on clogs and pattens. Mrs. John Adams 
asked her husband to send her from Philadel- 
phia, in 1775, "two yards of black calamanco 
for shoes,'' saying she could not wear leather 
if she went barefoot. However, in the coun- 
try, perhaps at a somewhat later date, the trav- 
elling shoemaker was well known. Setting 

H 



114, SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

up his work-bench in a corner of the great 
kitchen, he would spend perhaps two or three 
weeks in one house ; and while he shod the 
family, he regaled his customers with all the 
news and gossip from far and wide. 

By way of silently reproving the vanity of 
their wives and daughters, the sterner sex 
appeared in immense powdered wigs, stiffly 
starched ruffles, glittering knee and shoe 
buckles, embroidered silk waistcoats, white 
silk stockings, and coats of every hue but 
black, trimmed with great gilt or silver but- 
tons. With these elaborate wardrobes of the 
men to keep in order, what wonder the women 
had no time to cultivate their ^' squirrels' 
brains," to quote one of the gallant croakers 
of the time ! 

For the intellectual acquirements of the 
women were small, and history tells us that 
some of the most renowned and virtuous of 
their number scarcely ever opened a book. 
" It was the fashion to ridicule female learn- 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. II5 

ing," wrote Mrs. John Adams ; ^' women were 
engaged in domestic affairs." 

But if our grandmothers did not puzzle 
their brains over the humanities, and were 
wofully ignorant of the rights of women, tra- 
dition makes them marvels of strength and 
vigor. Alas for tradition ! Even then Amer- 
ican women were condemned by foreigners 
for their early blight. The Abbe Robin 
wrote : ^^ At twenty years of age the women 
have no longer the freshness of youth ; at 
thirty-five or forty they are wrinkled and 
decrepit. The men are almost as prema- 
ture." 

An unprejudiced student of the ancient re- 
gime, weary of listening to the popular wail 
over the mysterious ill health of our women, 
may well point a significant finger at our 
tight-laced, scantily clad grandmothers, who 
lived in the days when thick soles and "water- 
proofs were not, who frequented cold churches 
and lived in cold houses, and who endured 



Il6 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

great physical labor, with little recreation of 
any kind. 

After all, we fancy the most ardent lovers 
of the past would hardly be in favor of re- 
viving the time-honored customs of the early 
days of the Republic. With the mahogany 
sideboard rescued from oblivion, the spinning- 
wheel set up in the parlor, and the quaint 
china tea-set upon the closet shelves, we 
can all cry, — 

*' O, those pleasant times of old, with their chivalry and 

state, 
I love to read their chronicles which such brave deeds 

relate. 
I love to sing their ancient rhymes, to hear their legends 

told, — 
But Heaven be thanked I live not in those blessed times 

of old ! '' 




ABOUT SPINNING-WHEELS. 



HAT faithful cornpanion of our grand- 
mothers, the old-time spinning-wheel, 
was long ago consigned to oblivion. In some 
dark garret or remote farm-house the dust has 
gathered upon its venerable frame, and the 
spiders have woven their frail webs about its 
silent wheel. But by a sudden freak of fash- 
ion it has lately been restored to favor, and 
become a cherished ornament of the parlor. 
How long this ancient treasure will be num- 
bered among our penates no one can tell ; but 
its very presence speaks more eloquently of 
the past than all our Centennial orators or 
printed records. Anything that has survived 
the wear and tear of one hundred years may 



Il8 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

lay claim to respectable antiquity ; but the 
spindle and distaff are as old as the Egyptian 
monuments. To be sure, the spindle was not 
mounted in a frame till a comparatively recent 
date, for the spinning-wheel is said to have 
been invented in Nuremberg in 1430. But 
the *' spinsters " of merry England knew noth- 
ing about the wheel till the time of Henry the 
Eighth, though it had then long been used by 
the Hindoos in making their far-famed mus- 
lins, those "webs of woven wind." Yet in the 
early ages of the world, " Go spin, you jade, go 
spin," was a familiar sound to both princess 
and peasant. Did not young Telemachus bid 
his royal mamma return to her spindle and 
loom instead of meddling with public affairs ? 
And as long ago as the tenth century Queen 
Bertha of Bergundy-Transjurane used to ride 
about her kingdom on horseback with a dis- 
taff fastened to her saddle, spinning as she 
went. Hence arose the proverb, "The good 
old times when Bertha span." 



ABOUT SPINNING- WHEELS. 1 19 

Indeed, a woman who could not spin would 
hardly have been considered respectable in 
primitive days, and moreover it would hardly 
have been thought respectable for her to do 
anything else. 

A highly educated and talented Italian 
woman once went to Petrarch for advice, com- 
plaining that the world said to her, '' The busi- 
ness of a woman is to sew and spin ; lay down 
your pen and take up the needle and distaff." 
That was five centuries ago, and the world 
has not yet become fully convinced that it is 
necessary for woman to educate anything but 
her fingers. 

The selectmen of New England, in Puritan 
times, thought it their bounden duty to see 
that every girl in the village did a proper 
amount of spinning and weaving. England's 
attempt to repress American manufactures — 
the Earl of Chatham declaring that ^^ the colo- 
nists had no right to manufacture as much 
as a horseshoe-nail" — set the spinning-wheels 



I20 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

whirling day and night all over the land. The 
society organized in New England in 1765 to 
repudiate foreign cloths was wonderfully popu- 
lar. To insure an abundance of wool, its 
patriotic members agreed to eat no mutton, 
and to purchase no meat of any butcher who 
should commit the crime of killing sheep. The 
women formed themselves into similar associa- 
tions, promising to card, spin, and weave their 
own clothing ; and well did they keep their 
vows. Many of them even went into the 
fields to pull flax, and scutched and hackled it 
themselves. 

In the early inventories of furniture there is 
no allusion to forks, but there were plenty of 
napkins ; and this little fact points significantly 
to the skill and industry of the housewives of 
old. History records that a certain matron of 
the Revolution left at her death enough home- 
spun cloth, in the shape of curtains, quilts, and 
garments of all sorts and patterns, to stock 
a village store. This person was a worthy 



ABOUT SPINNING-WHEELS. 121 

contemporary of Mrs. Washington ; for the 
latter, according to her biographers, kept six- 
teen spinning-wheels in constant operation in 
her house. Two home-made cotton gowns 
striped with silk, which were worn by the first 
President's wife, were justly regarded as tri- 
umphs of skill, the silk stripes having been 
made from ravellings of brown silk stockings 
and old crimson damask chairs. Even Wash- 
ington himself is said to have been arrayed in 
a complete suit of homespun when he arrived 
in New York to take the Presidential chair. 
Indeed, we are assured that the leading men of 
that era were proud of appearing in public in 
homespun coats and breeches ; and that when 
women presented their husbands with clothing 
woven and made up by their own fair hands, 
*' men had solid pleasures now unknown.'* 

It was the fashion in the Colonies to have 
great spinning bees, or *' wool-breakings." 
Here all the damsels in the neighborhood 
collected to card and spin till night, when the 



122 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

young men joined them, and the gathering 
ended with a dance. Pianos were unknown ; 
but the " music of ancient industry," to quote 
a New England historian, — the sound of the 
spinning-wheel whirUng at the rate of fifty 
miles an hour, the loud beatings of the loom 
and dashing of the churn, quelled all discord 
in the family. It is said the Grecian women 
had a habit of spinning with the distaff as they 
walked ; and certain elderly women in New 
England were wont to take their knitting-work 
with them when they walked abroad. We 
fear these industrious creatures had no eye for 
the wonders of the wayside, and that the click 
of the needles drowned the voice of nature. 
But then, as an old writer quaintly remarks, 
" Industry was a habit of female life, and it 
required resolution sometimes to bring it into 
subjection." He tells us, too, that young 
women, instead of talking over their conquests, 
then boasted of the number of hanks of thread 
they could spin, or the quantity of cloth they 



ABOUT SPINNING- WHEELS, 1 23 

could weave in a day on rustic looms made by 
their fathers or brothers. And modern maid- 
ens are boldly accused of spinning nothing 
but street yarn ! Longfellow has given us a 
pretty picture of the Puritan maiden seated 
beside her wheel, " the carded wool like a 
snow-drift piled at her knee," and her foot on 
the treadle. But the maiden of today may 
also be seen with her foot on a treadle. The 
yards of cotton cloth which she rapidly turns 
into garments may not be so beautiful as the 
snowy wool, and the loud buzz of the sewing- 
machine may not sound as musical as the whir 
of Priscilla's wheel ; but would n't the women 
of old have been glad of a sewing-machine on 
which to stitch the dainty ruffles of their liege 
lords } 

The spinning-wheel and loom were insep- 
arable companions of the early Western pio- 
neers, and the song of the wheel was heard 
in the cabins of the settlers at all times and 
seasons. In summer the wool was spun for 



124 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

winter clothing, and the flax for thin garments 
was spun in winter. Only a few years ago it 
was stated that the brown jeans — a favorite 
material for men's suits — were still made by 
the old, slow process in the rural districts of 
the Cumberland Valley, the art having become 
hereditary. And as late as 1820 women in 
the country towns of New England manu- 
factured a great part of the family clothing, 
keeping the dye-tub in the chimney-corner. 
The art of dyeing was not very well under- 
stood in those primitive times, and Daniel 
Webster's adventure in' his school-days, when 
he sallied out in a suit of fresh blue home- 
spun, was the sad experience of many another 
youth. A sudden shower was fatal to snowy 
linen, for the rain soon washed the color from 
the coat into the shirt. 

The Southern women of Revolutionary 
times were very much troubled by depreda- 
tions of Indians and Tories, who not only 
helped themselves to all the clothing they 



ABOUT SPINNING-WHEELS. 12$ 

could find, but even stole cloth from the looms, 
and many of the sufferers were at their wits' 
end to know how to keep their families in trim. 
Some of them made a rough loom between 
four trees in the forest, and there secretly 
worked in pleasant weather, covering the loom 
and web with cow-skins when it rained. And 
the poorest but most ingenious matrons gath- 
ered the beautiful silk of the milkweed and 
spun it with flax for garments. 

The descendants of those Southern women 
have proved themselves as fertile in expedients 
as their grandmothers, and spinning-wheels 
have been better known of late years at the 
South than in any other part of the country. 
Before the war they were often seen in the 
houses of the small planters, kept in constant 
motion by the negro women, who spun yarns 
of cotton, flax, and wool. Many of the older 
women were very accomplished spinners, while 
others did the carding, the doubling and twist- 
ing, and making into skeins. These yarns 



126 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

were woven into cloth for the slaves, who were 
furnished with new garments at Christmas and 
at one other time during the year. The plant- 
ers' proud wives and accomplished daughters 
often cut homespun suits for days together, 
which the slave women afterward made up 
into garments. But during the war the spin- 
ning-wheels all over the South had a new lease 
of life, for not only the slaves, but their owners, 
must be clothed, and the few factories at the 
South could do little toward supplying the 
immense demand for clothing. The forest 
trees and shrubs yielded dyes, as in earlier 
days, and delicate ladies were obliged to learn 
how to spin, dye, and weave. In those indus- 
trious Southern homes the mournful whir of 
the spinning-wheel was the first sound which 
greeted one's ears in the morning, and the last 
at night. The spinning was done in the din- 
ing-room, and in the kitchen the clumsy old- 
fashioned loom was kept. Here were turned 
out the heavy jeans for the men, the plain un- 



ABOUT SPINNING-WHEELS. 12/ 

bleached homespun, and the checked, plaided, 
and striped goods which formed the clothing 
of the women. ** I well remember my pleas- 
ure/' says a Southern lady, " when I had 
two new homespun dresses. A calico seemed 
almost as unattainable as a silk." 

Everything was cut and made in the family, 
and there was no sewing-machine to lighten 
the labor. We dwellers north of Mason and 
Dixon's line have little conception of the 
devices to which those Southern women were 
driven. From the undyed wool of black sheep 
a thread was spun which they knit into gloves, 
and ladies cut up their old black silk dresses, 
relics of happier days, and ravelled out the 
pieces. Then some deft old aunty carded the 
silk with white cotton and spun it : the result, 
a gray, silky thread, was knit into pretty and 
strong gloves. 

Those days which so sorely tried men s (and 
women's) souls are happily dead ; but the spin- 
ning-wheel deserves immortality. 



128 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

We laugh at the zeal of our wives and 
daughters in reviving this outgrown thing of 
the past ; for it seems as sadly out of place 
in our modern houses, and just as helpless 
amid our bustling ways of life, as would some 
high-born, delicate lady who had been reared 
in a nunnery, should she come in the garb 
of two or three centuries ago, her beautiful 
embroidery in hand, to take up her abode 
with us. 

Perchance a century hence the sewing-ma- 
chine will look as antiquated to the critical 
eyes of our descendants as the spinning-wheel 
looks to ours. But our noisy machine is a fit 
production of this noisy age, and even time 
can never throw about it the atmosphere of 
poetry which envelops the dainty wheel. To 
be sure, the spinning-wheel has accomplished 
its mission ; but there it stands, a perpetual 
reminder of the industry, ingenuity, thrift, and 
patience of women in all ages and countries. 



OUR LITERARY CLUB. 



^HE Boston State House casts its be- 
nignant shadow over many towns, and 
a true son of the Hub is nothing if not liter- 
ary. The very conductors on the railroads 
give occasional lectures in suburban halls to 
the delight and instruction of their audiences. 

I accosted one of these popular officials on 
his rounds through the cars one day, and 
asked him about his favorite books. *' I 've 
read Dickens and Wilkie Collins and all 
those," he replied, " (tickets, please,) but ah ! 
none of 'em can come up to the ' Decline and 
Fall of the Roman Empire/ That 's fasci- 
nating." 

One cannot live long within a dozen miles 
6* I 



130 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

of Athens, — I allude to the modern Athens, 
— and not see the propriety of doing as the 
Athenians do. So it happened, one winter 
evening, that we — a small party of ladies and 
gentlemen — met together in solemn conclave 
to improve our minds, or, as a jeering out- 
sider remarked, to "get cultured up." Plow 
to do it was the question. One of our number, 
a lady with a gentle, sensible face, proposed 
to study modern authors ; but it was voted 
that, though entertaining, the writers of the 
present century were not instructive. A 
young woman who had seen some twenty- 
five summers, and who had lately returned 
from Europe, wanted to study art ; to get 
into an "art wave" she declared the end and 
aim of her being. " Most of us are too young 
to have original ideas about anything," she 
said. " If we were old and knew everything, 
it would be different. As it is, we must have 
some subject we can 'study up^ on." 

Miss Fogg was anxious to consider Milton. 



OUR LITERARY CLUB. 13I 

'' He writes in such a heavenly way about 
angels and things," she said in a gush of 
enthusiasm. 

The young man with hands in his pockets, 
who sat next me in a chair tilted back on 
two legs, whispered that Miss Fogg was a 
genius, and wrote for the magazines. This 
youth suggested the government of the United 
States as an interesting study, and something 
about which most people were deplorably igno- 
rant, but was at once frowned down. 

*'As you will not let us vote, we are con- 
tent with our superficial knowledge," cried 
the ladies. 

It was finally decided that we should discuss 
English literature from the beginning of the 
sixteenth century. Now I was not reared 
under the shadow of the State House, and 
at first a painful sense of my own ignorance 
kept me silent. But when Sir Thomas Moore 
was under consideration, some one said, '' Let 
me see, he wrote the Irish ballads, did n't 



132 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

he ? " And in a little talk with Miss Fogg 
about our mutual admiration for Dr. Holmes, 
she remarked that she always did like " Prue 
and I." After that I began to take courage. 

As the winter wore on, we wandered widely 
from the path marked out. The conversation 
ranged in one short hour from Sir Walter 
Raleigh to the Polar Sea ; from the Italian 
Improvisatore to discussions on ethics. The 
young ladies took their tatting, it was so much 
easier to keep awake when they had work, 
they said. 

I don't know how we drifted back to the 
twelfth century, but we were at the mercy 
of a fickle breeze. For long after we had 
buried Lord Bacon, we unearthed " My Cid " ; 
and from the old quaint story of his heroic 
deeds we came back to America and John 
Brown. 

So our inquiring minds flitted from Jeremy 
Taylor to northern mythology ; from panthe- 
ism to the most approved method of cooking 



OUR LITERARY CLUB. 133 

beefsteak. But although one of the ladies 
described the modus operandi, we never under- 
stood how a ball of butter could be roasted 
on a spit, or decided satisfactorily whether 
the farthingales which old Hugh Latimer con- 
demned as vanities were identical with the 
hoops of the present day. At one of the last 
meetings, when Leibnitz was '* up,'* some of 
the gentlemen ventured on to dangerous 
ground. Their earnest dispute about the 
nature of monads excited now frivolous, now 
sarcastic remarks from the ladies. The clos- 
ing hour, ten o'clock, found them hopelessly 
floundering in the mire of Pre-established 
Harmony. That was the only time I ever 
saw patient Mr. Straw excited ; but the levity 
of the ladies had exasperated the little man 
almost to the verge of rudeness. For he 
complained, after the meeting broke up, that 
it was useless to talk metaphysics in a club 
like that. And when I mildly suggested that 
such abstruse subjects did not interest most 



134 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

ladies, he sharply exclaimed, ^' Why can't 
they stop their chatter then ? " (Mr. Straw 
was a learned man who had kindly come from 
the city to conduct our discussions.) 

After that night our Literary Club lan- 
guished. The young ladies had dropped off, 
one by one, long before ; and our one young 
man now followed. At the last meeting the 
only persons present were Mr. Straw and 
myself We stared helplessly at each other 
several minutes, — then adjourned the club 
sine die. 




THE MISERY OF IT. 



IHE true secret of happiness," said a 
certain wise old lady, "is always to 
have a little less time than one wants, and 
a little more money than one needs." 

Now, why should n't that large class of 
people who are commonly called '' comfortably 
off," always have a little more money than 
they need ? And how many of their own 
neighbors suspect that the phrase *' comforta- 
bly off" is too often only a pleasing fiction, 
and that clouds and darkness, invisible to 
outsiders, hang over their devoted homes ? 
As long as money lasts it flows freely, and 
people enjoy the beautiful things it can buy, 
after the manner of the careless grasshoppers. 



136 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

Ah ! if every man's purse were like the mi- 
raculous pitcher of Hawthorne's tale, and were 
constantly replenished by unseen hands, from 
unknown sources, he might safely take no 
thought for the morrow. But by and by the 
coffers are empty ; now, what becomes of our 
improvident friends ? Do they sell their big 
houses and move into smaller ones, curtail 
expenses, adopt self-denial for the family motto, 
and live like poor people, not like rich ones ? 
Nothing of the sort ; their credit is good, and 
they can easily borrow the money for present 
emergencies. This done, all goes on as be- 
fore, till more bills .come pouring in ; till the 
interest on the mortgaged house or land be- 
comes due ; or till a note some trusting friend 
has indorsed becomes payable. Then comes 
a terrible struggle to get into smooth water 
again without any one's suspecting that the 
poor creatures w^ere so near drowning. In 
some households these private panics are 
periodical. This is the misery of it, — the 



THE MISERY OF IT. I37 

misery of keeping up appearances. '^I would 
rather live in a hovel/* said a bright young 
girl to me, " and have nothing to worry about, 
than to go through these dreadful times, never 
knowing how it will all end/' 

We love luxury, — it is grateful to the 
senses ; but let us ask our inmost souls 
whether the game is worth the candle. To 
live in a handsome, well-furnished house is an 
undeniably comfortable thing in itself; and it 
is natural enough to want to dress as well and 
as fashionably as our neighbors and friends. 
Indeed, Emerson quotes a lady as declaring 
— Heaven save the mark! — that "the sense 
of being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling 
of inward tranquillity which religion is power- 
less to bestow." The author of " A Plea for 
Extravagance," in a late number of the Wo- 
man's Journal, is doubtless of the same mind. 
She thinks our *' present ways of living are 
ruinous, simply because they are so narrow 
and penurious/' and that every American 



138 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

woman should be queen in a small way, and 
enjoy prosperities and luxuries now beyond 
her reach. 

Is it, then, an established fact that a peo- 
ple's happiness increases with its possessions ? 
Irving speaks of the great change in the char- 
acter of our British cousins since the introduc- 
tion of commerce, and notes the decline of 
that free and joyous spirit which gave the 
country its old title of " Merrie England/* 
" England's gayest customs," he says, " pre- 
vailed at times when her common people en- 
joyed comparatively few of the comforts and 
conveniences which they do at present." 

So true it is that the over-anxiety and haste 
of us moderns to " get up in the world " bring 
in their train hosts of devouring cares. The 
evil habit of shirking our responsibilities, and 
sacrificing everything to making a good ap- 
pearance, is gnawing at the root of the whole 
body politic. For we see this lack of fine 
moral sensitiveness in public as well as pri- 



THE MISERY OF IT. 1 39 

vate life. Unfortunately, the recent frauds of 
high officials were not needed to open our 
eyes. Our easy-going friends intend to pay 
their debts some time ; so does the govern- 
ment. But in the mean time it spends thou- 
sands of dollars on some needless extrava- 
gance which may flatter the national ambition, 
or contribute to its glory. Year after year 
Mr. Sumner called the attention of Congress 
to the unpaid French claims ; and his appeals 
had as much effect upon that honorable body 
as the petitions to wind up the famous case of 
Jarndyce and Jarndyce had in the Court of 
Chancery. Dickens's words, with very slight 
alteration, would apply equally well to these 
long-pending debts of the government. " The 
little plaintiff or defendant who was promised 
a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarn- 
dyce should be settled, has grown up, pos- 
sessed himself of a real horse, and trotted 
away into the other world." 

Look at our splendid palaces of trade, and 



140 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

then across the water at the small, dingy, two- 
story brick building where, the great bankers, 
Baring Brothers, have their headquarters! 
Our showy castles have no solid foundation ; 
what wonder that they topple over? 

After all, it is only our seeming needs that 
increase so fast. Thoreau said, " My greatest 
skill has been to want but little." During a 
recent visit at the far West, nothing, not even 
the curious, cramped ways of living, struck me 
with such surprise as everybody's frankness in 
confessing his or her poverty. What we con- 
sider bare necessaries were to them unat- 
tained luxuries. Everybody was poor, every- 
body worked hard, nobody spent a penny 
unless he had it to spend. Yet they were 
not behindhand in joyous merrymakings, and 
all seemed happy in their sturdy independ- 
ence. Shall we, the children of a free coun- 
try, always be cowardly slaves to opinion, in 
wretched bondage to appearances } Shall we 
ever dare disappoint that august personage, 



THE MISERY OF IT, 141 

Mrs. Grundy, by bravely living within our 
means ? 

It was a beautiful fable of the ancients that 
when the first beams of the rising sun fell 
upon the statue of Memnon, it uttered a 
strain of music. In these prosaic days God's 
sunshine falls across the paths of mortals, but 
they are too often unresponsive, or utter only 
harsh and discordant sounds. We cannot too 
earnestly cry, with our sweet-voiced Quaker 
poet, 

** Take from our lives the strain and stress, 
And let our ordered lives confess 

The beauty of thy peace." 




UP THE MISSISSIPPI. 



MIDSUMMER'S trip on the Missis- 
^ sippi River is one long, idle dream. 
The ladies who frequent the cabin of the 
steamer find their only amusement in change 
of toilet ; and she who appears at the break- 
fast-table in a loose wrapper and short hair 
will scarcely be recognized at noon in her 
flounces and curls and gay ribbons. The 
children on board develop a frightful capacity 
for eating, and emerge from the good-natured 
cook's domains at ail hours of the day, with 
their mouths and hands full of cake. 

But he who shuns the atmosphere of the 
cabin may spend day after day in a shady nook 
of the pilot-house, with an open book before 



UP THE MISSISSIPPI. 143 

him, and hardly know whether he is in the 
body or not. The boat gracefully sweeps 
around the abrupt bends in this incredibly 
crooked river, and floats by tangled forests 
whose luxuriant growth seems almost tropical. 
Sometimes a glittering serpent swims across 
the river, and from the bank comes the drowsy 
hum of the locusts. Great lumber-rafts float 
down the stream with their little houses for 
the raftsmen. Groups of wretched Indians 
sun themselves upon the banks, or idly plash 
about in their canoes. Anon the steamer 
passes between hazy bluffs with queer little 
villages climbing their craggy sides. The 
boat makes slow progress, for the water is 
low and the sand-bars treacherous. Then 
long tarries are made at the landings, where 
the miserable deck-hands trudge monoto- 
nously back and forth, laden with bags of 
wheat. At night everything is still more 
unreal. The landings are made by the wild, 
fitful light of the steamer's torches ; and as 



144 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

the boat moves off again, the smoke-stack 
sends out showers of fiery sparks which whirl 
a moment in mid-air, and then are quenched 
in the dark river. And still in the warm sun- 
light, or under the stars, the Father of Waters 
tranquilly sleeps. 

One must see the tumult of the waters be- 
tween Minneapolis and St. Anthony to know 
what fierce unrest is theirs before they gain 
the calm below ; for there the waters of this 
same placid river " roll and leap and roar and 
tumble all day long." The principal falls or 
rapids of St. Anthony have lost the wild 
beauty which they once had. For it was 
discovered that the stone in the river was 
fast wearing away, and an " apron " was put 
in to preserve the water-power. The water 
slides smoothly down this planked descent, 
and strikes the rocks at its foot with tremen- 
dous force. All about the falls in every direc- 
tion the water dashes over huge bowlders, and 
leaps from the rocks in foaming cascades. A 



UP THE MISSISSIPPI. 145 

certain large slab on the edge of the rapids 
is painfully conspicuous ; this bears a staring 
advertisement in red letters of '' O. K. Sale- 
ratus." 

It was on Hennepin Island, which lies in 
the middle of the river, that the futile attempt 
was once made to dig a tunnel. The water 
broke in and threatened to tear up the very 
island, and carry it, with all its mills, down the 
river. Immense blocks of stone were broken 
from the ledge by the rebellious water, and 
their corners are as square as if hewn from 
the solid rock by the hand of man. 

One day in the pleasant *'moon of strawber- 
ries," we drove from the beautiful city of Min- 
neapolis to the Falls of Minnehaha, over a 
road as smooth and level as a floor. The 
carriage stopped unexpectedly in a grove of 
oaks. " Do you hear it ' calling to you 
through the silence'.^" said a friend, as we 
alighted. We listened and obeyed the call. 
We had taken a few steps when suddenly, 
7 J 



146 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

through the branches of the trees, we saw the 
falls. Too much surprised and moved to speak, 
we stood as if spellbound. It was not Min- 
nehaha as it is represented in pictures that 
we saw, — no tame, smoothly flowing sheet of 
water. Minnehaha Creek runs foaming and 
bubbling over its rocky bed, then 

"■ Laughs, and leaps into the valley." 

As the sparkling water takes its leap it sep- 
arates into a myriad of tiny globules, which 
whirl, and dance, and '' flash and gleam," and 
dissolve in mist as they come down. 

In order to appreciate the beauty and truth 
of Longfellow's description it is necessary to 
see the cataract, — which the poet himself 
never saw ! To be sure, travellers sometimes 
contemptuously shrug their shoulders when 
they see Minnehaha ; but such persons are 
sure to be " disappointed " in Niagara. 

Most of our party were content with one 
look at Minnehaha. The ladies said it was 



UP THE MISSISSIPPI, , 147 

beautiful ; the gentlemen sighed over the 
unavailable water-power ; then, having done 
their duty, they retired out of sight and 
hearing of the falls, to sit under an awning 
and drink lemonade. A young man sat on 
one of the rustic seats overlooking the falls, 
alternately studying the cataract and writing 
on his knee. And a group of young men and 
women were having their pictures taken by 
an artist who had established himself under 
a tree, half-way down the bank. This party 
watched us with surprise as we followed the 
narrow winding path to the foot of the falls, 
where a rainbow arches the stream. Carefully 
treading the slippery ledge, we gained the 
hollowed cliff behind the falls. A cooling 
cloud of spray drove in upon us ; the cata- 
ract's laughter was hoarse and deep ; and 
through the sheet of falling water we looked 
out to the green trees and sunlight beyond. 
A shrill whistle, a hurried last look, and the 
cars whirled us away. 



148 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

We may never revisit the green solitude 
where Minnehaha pours its bright waters, 
but their music, once heard, can never be 
forgotten. The Fates forbid that Laughing 
Water should ever turn a mill-wheel. Its 
province is to make man glad, and thrill him 
with its beauty evermore. 




PRAIRIE LIFE. 



I. 




E first trod Minnesota soil at Red 
Wing, that bewildering little town 
among the bluffs where so many nationalities 
are represented, and where handsome churches, 
lager-beer saloons; and all varieties of dwelling- 
houses are jumbled together in hopeless con- 
fusion. But we gladly said farewell to Barn 
Bluff, where rests the Indian chief who gave 
his name to the town, and took up our line of 
march for the prairies, the straw stables and 
log cabins with thatched roofs looking very 
strange to our unaccustomed eyes as we passed 
through the straggling suburbs. Too many 
of the Western towns have a look of premature 



I50 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

decay, as if they had spent their youth in riot- 
ous living. Many of the houses — huts, we 
should call them — by the wayside have a 
tumble-down, poverty-stricken air. The small 
way-stations are genuine mushroom towns 
brought into existence by the railroad, and 
anxious to maintain an appearance of business. 
When you have seen one you have seen them 
all, — a station-house, an elevator, half a dozen 
battlement front stores, and as many more 
dwelling-houses built after the sham style of 
New Jersey. In our journeyings through the 
Gopher State we came upon a thrifty little 
village surrounded by rolling prairie, which 
reminded us of New England. Here we 
pitched our tent for the winter ; for as long 
as doctors recommend the climate of Minne- 
sota to invalids, so long the poor deluded crea- 
tures will flee thither. What a winter it was ! 
Now and then a cold snap would come ; every- 
thing eatable was frozen ; ears and noses did 
not always escape ; farmers drove loads of 



PRAIRIE LIFE. 151 

wheat to market with their heads muffled in 
blankets and skins ; the sun-dogs kept guard 
by day in the cold sky, and by night the paler 
moon-dogs took their place. No wild crea- 
tures stirred abroad except the rabbits, though 
once or twice we caught a glimpse of a star- 
tled deer or wolf bounding through the snow. 
Anon the sun shone warm, the snow melted 
till the roads were full of running water, the 
air was soft, the blue-jays clamored among the 
fallen acorns before our door, and the prairie- 
chickens gleaned among last years oats. 
More sudden changes were never witnessed in 
maligned New England ; and when a con- 
sumptive friend wrote, " The doctor recom- 
mends Minnesota; what do you advise.'^" an 
old settler said, " Tell her to stay at home ; 
tell her the climate 's a humbug." And I did. 
Disappointed in the climate, there were so 
many other things to interest us that we for- 
gave our well-meaning Esculapius for sending 
us to the Western wilds. We were living in 



152 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

a little world within itself, where hardly an 
echo of the busy stir of life outside ever pene- 
trated. The mere fact that we had come 
from the East insured us a warm welcome 
from the villagers, who all cherished the one 
bright dream of going East before they died. 
Among the strange presents which came to 
us from our kind neighbors were great cakes 
of frozen milk wTapped in newspaper. We 
were rather disappointed at not being pre- 
sented with a sorrel-pie, for that was sup- 
posed to be a favorite article of diet with one 
family, and a flourishing plantation of the 
sour weed near the house seemed to confirm 
the belief 

On the anniversary of the landing of the 
Pilgrims and the settlement of their little vil- 
lage, our friends gave an oyster-supper in the 
town hall. A neighbor of ours who had emi- 
grated from Boston some years before, and 
who had been extremely unfortunate, decUned 
to take any part in the supper, designating 



PRAIRIE LIFE. 1 53 

both events which the villagers proposed to 
celebrate as ''bad jobs"; while his wife, who 
pined for her old home, declared that she had 
nothing to look forward to but the grave. In 
striking contrast to this homesick pair comes 
to mind an old lady who lived with her son 
in a neat, pretty house, but who mourned the 
ruder life of other years. She walked several 
miles over the prairie one day till she saw 
a log hut which suited her ideas of home. 
There she took up her quarters for the day, 
telling her astonished hostess how glad she 
was to ''get away from style !" Her son had 
taken away her spinning-wheel and built a 
new house, and life was a burden. 

The Norwegian church was a picturesque 
feature in the landscape, and a glance within 
some Sunday morning transported one to the 
old country. The black-gowned minister ex- 
horted his flock in a foreign tongue, and on 
the wooden benches before him were ranged 
the peasant men and women of the North. 



154 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

The Norwegians in that vicinity Hve in the 
poorest little huts thatched with straw. One 
room accommodates a family, and the floor is 
merely the ground strewn with hay. In such 
a house no sweeping is required, and the 
evils of house-cleaning are unknown. But the 
Norwegians are an industrious, money-making 
people, and not a few of them have become 
rich farmers and owners of handsome houses. 
Most of the house and farm servants belong 
to this class of foreigners, and in time they 
make very good " help," however hard it may 
be at first to make them understand the pro- 
priety of washing or baking oftener than once 
a year. It was an endless source of amuse- 
ment to watch these sturdy, rough-looking 
people, dressed in the curious garb of the 
" old country," as they came to the village 
store with the products of their farms to ex- 
change for groceries. They brought tender 
chickens at five cents a pound, eggs at six 
cents a dozen, and fresh butter marvellously 



PRAIRIE LIFE. 1 55 

cheap, but tied up, I am bound to say, in the 
dingiest of handkerchiefs. Their dialect was 
wonderful to hear, and they puzzled the thin- 
visaged tradesman by asking for '' raisin- 
grain" (which meant rice) and other incom- 
prehensibles, till, as one of them said, "it 
was reason to get mad" so often, that a Nor- 
wegian clerk was employed to wait upon his 
countrymen. 

But several miles farther west lay a beauti- 
ful farming country settled entirely by Nor- 
wegians ; this was called the largest Norse 
settlement in America. The houses were 
large, w^ell-built, and occupied by wealthy 
farmers. With a pleasure-party from our vil- 
lage we visited one of these homes. The 
parlor windows were filled with beautiful 
plants, and among the blossoms little colored 
tapers were fastened. The mantel-piece was 
covered with black enamelled cloth on which 
were sewed innumerable porcelain buttons of 
various colors. An English ivy and strings 



156 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

of pop-corn were twined together over a trel- 
lis ; pop-corn and shells were glued to 
brackets ; worsted flowers, curiously wrought, 
adorned the walls ; and crosses of all sorts 
and sizes met the eye. In the middle of 
the room stood a large handsome piano, on 
which one of the Norwegian ladies, with a 
good deal of diffidence, performed. Even more 
unique in its arrangements was the dining- 
room, where we were quite unexpectedly sum- 
moned to refresh the inner man. On the 
table were dishes of canned fruit, and a num- 
ber of wineglasses which our host proceeded 
to fill with the juice of the grape. Never shall 
I forget the distress, the blank dismay depicted 
on the faces of those hospitable foreigners, who 
could neither speak nor understand a word of 
English, when the ruddy wine was passed to 
their guests ; for the ungracious descendants of 
the Puritans solemnly shook their heads and 
put their hands behind them. 

As spring advanced, it seemed to us idle 



PRAIRIE LIFE. 1 5/ 

lookers-on that an inexorable law of work held 
every one in its iron grasp. The farmers* 
wives worked like slaves. Besides their own 
families and the hired men to provide for, new 
land was occasionally broken, and then there 
were a dozen " breakers " to feed. It was no 
unusual thing to see women striding over the 
furrows driving a ''seeder" or harrow, though 
they were often foreigners in peasant dress. 
Even young American girls earn large wages 
by driving " harvesters " during the busiest 
season. With many of the farmers no recrea- 
tion relieves the wear and tear. The result 
is seen in people whose minds have been 
dwarfed and stunted by the incessant drain 
on physical strength, and strong men break- 
ing down in the prime of manhood. How 
quickly, to quote a Western college professor, 
" the real kicks over the pail of the creamy 
ideal " ! 

At a Western hotel I once encountered a 
"school committee-man" who took a deep in- 



158 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

terest in all possible teachers. What a New 
England girl could be ''way out West" for, 
unless it were to teach school, he was puzzled 
to understand. And my idleness was destined 
to excite still more surprise. A young farmer 
asked me to go coasting one wintry afternoon. 
As we walked up a long icy slope, a man 
driving an ox-team passed and gave us '^ a 
lift." He looked at us curiously as we dis- 
mounted, and inquired if we " hauled all those 
rocks down there." When informed that we 
were sliding for mere amusement, like two 
children, the man could not believe it. He 
stared, he winked, he actually gasped for 
breath. Then a sense of the ludicrous seemed 
to come over him with irresistible force. His 
amazed expression gave way to a twinkle of 
humor, which lighted up the hard lines of his 
brown face, and he drove off, laughing at the 
top of his voice. My companion, remarking 
that I did not seem to "sense it," explained 
that the man thought we had selected a site 



PRAIRIE LIFE, . 1 59 

for a house and were hauling stones for the 
foundation ! 

But to make a home in those distant wilds 
is truly no light matter. " Let me tell you 
how I pre-empted my quarter-section," said a 
prairie farmer to me. " I dug a hole in the 
ground and put up a little shanty over it, 
and slept there two nights. But though I 
wore my great-coat and hat and was wrapped 
in a quilt, it was fearfully cold, and I felt as 
if I were buried alive. Afterwards I ate 
crackers and cheese there two or three times, 
so to say I had lived there." 

" What dreadful times you pioneers had ! 
And is the West still your Eldorado } " I 
said. 

" Ask my wife," said the farmer, proudly. 

His wife was a gentle, bright-eyed woman 
for whom the freedom and excitement of life 
on the frontier had an indescribable charm. 
She had formerly lived in New Ulm, a town 
on the Minnesota River settled by Germans, 



l60 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

and very unlike the staid little farming village 
on the prairie where her husband brought her. 
Life does not wear so stern an aspect to the 
light-hearted Germans as it presents to our 
own conscientious, care-worn people, even 
when they have wandered so many leagues 
from home to pitch their tents in the wilder- 
ness. And so they have their beer-gardens 
in which to while away the summer after- 
noons, bands of music to play the airs sacred to 
Fatherland, and gay dances in vine-wreathed 
summer-houses. Many of the New Ulmites 
claim to be exiled noblemen. It is said that 
most of them are sceptics, and that before the 
Indian massacre of 1862 they burned Christ 
in effigy. Soon afterwards the whole town 
w^as burned and laid waste by the Indians. 
My farmer's wife had often watched the sav- 
ages in their wild scalp-dances, could talk with 
Chippewas and Dacotahs in their own tongue, 
and had even learned to sing their guttural 
chants and cruel war-sonc^s. 



PRAIRIE LIFE, l6l 

When the little German town was sacked 
(people said it was a judgment from Heaven), 
she had to flee for her life. But she was 
always ready to declare that she did not see 
how any one could live at the East. 

'' You may talk about your superior culture 
and other Boston notions," continued the 
farmer, helping himself to plum-cake, which 
luxury his wife indulged him in once a year, 
— at harvest-time, — '' but the smartest people 
are in the West. Give me enough to eat, and 
I don't care for the larnin." 

The first assertion is a familiar one, and 
never creates surprise in the minds of the 
few who realize what it is to '' open up " a 
new country, and who know that every added 
advantage, social or educational, instead of 
being handed down from remote generations, 
is coined out of somebody's very life. The 
last declaration was a libel on the speaker 
himself as well as on the country of his adop- 
tion, for nowhere is such a general interest 

K 



1 62 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

taken in education as in those far-ofif Western 
towns. So much pride is felt in the schools, 
that the last day of the term is a sort of holiday. 
The school-rooms are filled with spectators, 
and the women remove their bonnets and take 
out their knitting-work, prepared to spend the 
day. Any occasion that will bring people 
together is made much of, and so the indis- 
pensable lumber-wagons are called into fre- 
quent requisition. Nobody thinks of walking 
on the prairies, and indeed few ride for the 
sake of riding, the roads are so bad. Mrs. 
Somerville, in her '' Personal Recollections," 
speaks of an Edinburgh woman who had the 
disagreeable habit of looking through a spy- 
glass into her neighbors' houses. I know a 
woman on the prairie who took great comfort 
in the possession of such a glass. Her near- 
est neighbors lived a mile or two away, but 
the consciousness that she could visit them 
at any time by the aid of her powerful glass 
did much to dispel a feeling of loneliness and 



PRAIRIE LIFE. 1 63 

isolation. She thus kept herself acquainted 
with all that was going on in the village, and 
displayed a minute knowledge of distant trans- 
actions which seemed little short of marvel- 
lous, and was not altogether palatable to sen- 
sitive persons who lived within the range of 
her vision. But as her observations were not 
prompted by idle curiosity, or regarded by 
her in any other light than that of an inno- 
cent and laudable amusement, nobody ven- 
tured to protest. Queer little discoveries the 
spy-glass sometimes made, — as of the curious 
disposition a certain family made of cats. I 
have read of a Scotch woman whose love for 
cats was so great that she kept in her house 
no less than eighty-six living ones and twenty- 
eight stuffed ones in glass cases. But our 
prairie friends had a different motive for cul- 
tivating the society of cats. They raised an 
incredible number of these domestic animals, 
but no sooner had they attained a proper size 
than off came their ''jackets," which were 



164 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

manufactured into warm robes or coverlids. 
So many cats were a source of discomfort to 
their owner, for she could not go out to make 
a call or do an errand without being attended 
by a rear-guard of irrepressible pussies. I was 
told that in early pioneer times mittenless 
boys wore upon their hands the skins of 
small kittens. First settlers forego many com- 
forts, but their Yankee wit serves them in 
good stead, and they are fertile in expedients. 

Horses and cattle are allowed to run loose 
on the prairie to the severe detriment of the 
rail-fences which are built with much labor, 
and the farmer is liable to be aroused at any 
time of day or night by the cry of "Cattle in 
the grain ! " Sometimes the hghtning tears out 
the rails more effectually than the marauding 
cattle. The thunder-storms are long and ter- 
rific ; the little houses rattle hour after hour, 
and the tremendous peals make even stout 
hearts quake. The lightning takes strange 
freaks, and I have known it to run down a 



PRAIRIE LIFE, 1 65 

stove-pipe and fill the pots on the stove full 
of holes the size of peas. 

One night it struck a house where a physi- 
cian was watching by the bedside of a patient. 
The electric fluid came down the chimney, 
took off the back of the stove, and tore a 
large hole in the floor. The room seemed all 
aflame ; but in an instant every light in the 
house was extinguished, and the doctor and 
his patient were left for a few seconds quite 
rigid and powerless. But the lightning is 
not always so harmless, and horses are often 
killed by a deadly flash ; a loss felt the more 
because Minnesota is ''a hard country on 
horses." The climate does not seem adapted 
to their need, and they require the greatest 
care. In the winter they are often seen stand- 
ing motionless in the farm-yards, their heads 
and shoulders hidden in the great straw-stacks. 
They eat their way into the stacks, which thus 
furnish them with both food and shelter. 

Frost-storms may not be peculiar to the 



1 66 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

West, but I have never seen anything so 
beautiful in any other part of the country. 
Even there they are rarely seen, but one brill- 
iant winter morning I went out and found the 
crisp air full of the most exquisite, glittering 
particles of frost. The familiar saying, " He 
scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes," was hence- 
forth clothed with new meaning. Freshets oc- 
cur frequently. Then the tiny streams which 
are dignified by the name of rivers, and which 
ordinarily pursue their winding way so quietly 
that one scarcely knows of their existence, 
become, in the twinkling of an eye, raging 
torrents. The w^ater rises in volumes, and 
the bridges, put up with so much labor and 
expense, are anxiously w^atched. But the re- 
morseless flood often sweeps them away, and 
washes over acres of newly planted land. 
Then the mystery of the heavy bridges which 
look so strangely out of place on the dry 
prairie is explained, for the " dry runs " 
beneath them become rushing streams. One 



PRAIRIE LIFE, 1 6/ 

such freshet is indehbly impressed upon my 
memory. Three impatient men attempted 
with a team to ford the swollen river which 
ran through our green valley. But the swift 
current bore away the horses, and after long 
clinging with despairing fingers to the wagon- 
box which continually turned over and over 
in the rushing water, the men were rescued 
by a boat. When the water subsided, the 
little river carelessly loitered through its 
beautiful banks. In its clear depths no 
traces of the storm were visible ; only blue 
sky and fleecy clouds were reflected there, 
and bending trees with birds flying among 
the branches ; and the treacherous stream al- 
most persuaded us that no greater ripple had 
ever disturbed its tranquil breast than that 
caused by the plashing ducks and their shy 
broods of ducklings, or the dip of a passing 
oar. The river was hardly a feature of beauty 
in the landscape, for it was entirely hidden 
at a distance by the trees which bordered its 



1 68 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

banks. But when, in the early summer, we 
floated down the stream, it seemed a very 
dream of beauty. The wild apple and plum 
blossomed on the banks, and the currant- 
bush hung its pale clusters over the water. 
Wild-flowers of many hues grew on both 
sides of the narrow stream, and grapevines 
hung in festoons from the branching elms. 
Sometimes the harsh scream of the wild-cat 
startled us, or we listened to the plaintive 
note of the vvhippoorwill. As if to recom- 
pense man for the hardships he must undergo 
in those Western wilds, Nature is everywhere 
lavish of beauty. Rich groves of oak and 
elm are scattered over the prairie slopes, and 
birds of most brilliant plumage flash in and 
out of the branches. The various sorts of 
grain can be distinguished for miles by the 
different shades of green. Under my win- 
dow the thrushes and meadow-larks sang 
duets every morning ; and once a strange 
songster flew into an old oak before the open 



PRAIRIE LIFE, 1 69 

door, and sang a most ravishing accompani- 
ment to the music of the piano. When all 
was quiet in the yard the pretty wild rabbits 
amused themselves by darting in and out of 
the croquet-wickets, with far more enjoyment 
than is displayed by the usual devotees of 
that game. 

In the early spring, when the wild grass is 
still dry and brown, and the prairie is covered 
with the purple frost-flowers, the gophers open 
their sleepy eyes and come forth from their 
dark chambers underground to enjoy the sun- 
shine. They can be seen in every direction, 
frisking over the ground, or standing erect 
and motionless, as if to discover with their 
bright round eyes what changes have befallen 
the world since they bade it good night. In 
the latter position it is impossible to distin- 
guish them at a distance from so many brown 
twigs ; but the slightest noise sends them 
scampering to their burrows, where they dis- 
appear with a shrill chirp and a comical 



I/O SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

flourish of their feet. In the West these Uttle 
creatures take the place of the tree-squirrel, 
living on hazel-nuts, roots, and seeds of prairie 
plants. The prettiest and most common of 
the prairie-squirrels is the leopard spermo- 
phile, or striped gopher, a slender animal 
whose fur is beautifully spotted and striped. 
As much as I admired this little beauty, I 
was extremely annoyed by his habit of dig- 
ging holes in my flower-beds, thus uprooting 
the tender plants. While I carefully repaired 
the mischief, he was industriously at work in 
another part of the garden ; and perching 
himself near a freshly made hole, ready to 
dive in at a moment's notice, he would look 
exultingly at me with his saucy brown eyes. 
I would never consent to have him shot, and 
so he kept me busy through the season. 

The gray gopher is too much like a rat to 
be pretty ; and the pocket-gopher, though an 
ugly creature in appearance, is a nocturnal 
animal, and seldom seen. 



PRAIRIE LIFE. 171 

One of the first difficulties farmers have to 
contend with is the gopher. Every man is 
armed with shot-gun and ammunition for out- 
ward application, and a bottle of strychnine 
with which he loads kernels of corn for inner 
treatment. It is not uncommon to kill thirty 
gophers on a three-acre patch in one day. 
" On a new piece of ground and with a green 
Yankee to plant it," said my farmer friend with 
a sly twinkle in his eye, " the gopher will com- 
mence digging as the Yankee commences 
planting, follow him all day, and before night 
get from one to three rows ahead of him, dig- 
ging up every kernel of corn, merely taking 
out the chit and leaving the hard part to show 
where he has been." 

In some localities shooting gophers is as 
important a part of the farmer's work as "bug- 
ging" potatoes. As soon as the green shoots 
appear in the cornfields, the little ravagers 
dig them up to eat off the kernels ; while the 
pocket-gopher sometimes kills fruit trees of 



\J2 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

many years' growth by gnawing the roots. 
This is very trying to gardeners, for fruit is 
not easily raised in the newer portions of the 
West. I shall not soon forget a desperate 
young friend who' stood motionless in his gar- 
den one whole summer afternoon, with his 
rifle aimed at a pocket-gopher's hole. His 
patience was not rewarded, for the little mis- 
creant had no idea of being shot. The pocket- 
gopher is as fond of potatoes as an Irishman, 
and burrows under the hills, where he can eat 
them at his leisure. Thus with the greedy 
potato-bugs above ground and the pouched 
rat underneath, the farmer has a hard time 
raising his potatoes. 

The hot sun and rich soil make the weeds 
grow rampant, and if Mr. Warner had lived 
in Minnesota he would have had no time to 
write his *' Summer in a Garden." It is said 
that when a forest is burned down, a certain 
weed springs up from the ashes, and grows 
like the fabled beanstalk till it is as tall as 



PRAIRIE LIFE, 1 73 

the trees were. So it is called the fire -weed, 
and it is one of the rankest weeds that ever 
dared to lift its head among the growing 
grain. As if there were not enough weeds 
native to the soil, some early settler intro- 
duced " pusley " from the East ; for though not 
a Chinaman, he was fond of greens. And the 
*' pusley " takes kindly to the prairie soil, and 
grows there more luxuriantly than it ever can, 
thank Heaven, in the rocky soil of New Eng- 
land. When spring came round the settlers' 
wives missed the bright familiar faces of the 
dandelions, and sent home for seeds. But the 
prairie winds wafted the seeds far and wide, 
and they sprung up in the wheat-fields, to the 
sore annoyance of the farmers. 

The sudden appearance on the prairie of 
the strawberry-vine is as marvellous as the 
growth of the fire-weed. The strawberry-vine 
is not a native of Minnesota, but when a piece 
of wild land is broken and left undisturbed 
for a year, the second season finds it covered 
with strawberry-plants. 



174 



SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 



The absence of evergreens causes the coun- 
try in winter to look bare to an Eastern eye ; 
and at Christmas-time no trees or decorations 
can be had for love or money. All sorts of 
expedients are resorted to by the few who 
have time to observe the Christmas holi- 
days ; and on one occasion a family procured 
a native tree, and pasted green paper over the 
bare limbs. In St. Paul I saw little fir-trees 
for sale, in flower-pots, like choice hothouse 
plants. 



— 1^ 




II. 



OU 'LL never go back to the East 
to live after seeing this country ! " 
cried our jolly pilot, whose name should 
have been Mark Tapley. I Ve been on 
this river twenty-two years," he continued, 
turning his wheel as he talked, and narrowly 
watching the bluffs that he might keep in 
the channel, ** and I 'm poorer now than 
when I began." Then, while we slowly 
toiled up the Mississippi, our progress much 
retarded by the heavy barges of wheat in 
tow, he told us in rough language, but with 
great good-humor, of his mishaps. He had 
been blown up on one of the river boats ; 
he was severely wounded in the Indian war ; 



176 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

he had been down with the typhoid fever ; he 
had built a nice house only to see it burn to 
the ground ; but he ended this list of his dire 
experiences with the emphatic declaration, 
"The West is the place for me!" 

Everywhere we met deserters from the Pine 
Tree State, and at length we began to credit 
the statement that the principal use of Maine 
railroads is to facilitate emigration to the West. 
While the mere fact of coming " from the old 
State, you know," was sufficient passport to 
favor, it was plain that these sons and daugh- 
ters of New England had transferred their 
whole allegiance to the fair new State which 
the Indians well named Minnesota, " land of 
sky-tinted water." I will not ignore the old 
couple who, after ''roughing it" on a Western 
farm for a year, hastened back to Massachu- 
setts where they could have "«}Drivileges and 
things"; or the discontented friend, vv'ho, 
when some one remarked that the poem of 
Hiawatha must be read in the land of the 



PRAIRIE LIFE. 1 77 

Dacotahs to be appreciated, bitterly responded 
that he wished the Dacotahs had kept the 
land. But the unhappy mortals who pine for 
the fleshpots of Egypt are few, and meet with 
little sympathy from their sturdier brethren. 
They have been tried and found wanting ; for 
no one is deemed worthy to share the trials 
and glories of the Promised Land who cannot, 
to use the favorite Hoosier expression origi- 
nally applied to the prairie winds, "get up and 
howl." 

Many people go West to repair shattered 
health or fortunes, and in the farming locali- 
ties all classes are represented. Eastern mer- 
chants, professional men, mechanics, and farm- 
ers join hands in subduing the wilderness. 
They go from the hillsides of New England 
with a pride of birthplace which is never 
lost. Yet they feel a certain degree of supe- 
riority over those who have not the enterprise 
to leave their narrow chances at the East, and 
create homes and names for themselves in 



1/8 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

the great West. In view of the difficulties 
all first settlers have to encounter — the sore 
trials, the weary heart-aches — before they can 
feel that they are established in the land, they 
may well be proud of their achievements. It 
is only a few years since they were cast adrift 
on the prairie, with no houses to shelter them, 
no wood nor water, no provisions, and too 
often no money. A Western hotel in those 
pioneer days beggars description. A log- 
cabin with one room and a loft accommodated 
thirty or forty men. They climbed into the 
loft by the logs of the house ; and while the 
wolves howled dismally without, slept soundly 
on '* prairie feathers," or prairie hay spread 
upon the floor. The lower room could not 
always boast of a floor, and stray "feathers" 
had an uncomfortable way of falling through 
the great cracks in the loft upon the breakfast- 
table beneath. For such a life the settlers 
had left all the comforts of a New England 
home. In the depths of a Minnesota winter. 



PRAIRIE LIFE. - 1 79 

the mercury often 30° or 40° below zero, the 
men enveloped themselves, after the Indian 
fashion, in red, blue, and green blankets, leav- 
ing only a loop-hole for the eyes, and scoured 
the country on horseback. Or, tired of hving 
on salt pork, they strapped on huge Norwegian 
snow-shoes, and went through the deep snows 
in pursuit of game. In summer the snow- 
shoes were exchanged for high, stout boots ; 
for there were weary miles to travel through 
tall, wiry grass, which cut trousers and ordi- 
nary boots to pieces in a trice, and, moreover, 
rattlesnakes lurked in the prairie grass. The 
farmers picked up and hauled away, not stones, 
but countless loads of oak " grubs," which 
they use for fuel. In turning the sod the 
sharp plough cuts off the oak trees or bushes 
which the yearly fires keep always small and 
stunted, and the harrow drags the great roots 
or " grubs " to the surface. Then they fenced 
in their forty-acre fields, sharpening and nail- 
ing split hard-wood rails till their hands and 



l8o SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

arms were so scratched and lacerated that the 
pain kept them awake at night. 

" If ever in my hfe I have eaten the bread 
of carefulness and tasted the sweets of self- 
denial, it is now," wrote home one of these 
farmers. " I go ragged, and hungry, and 
cold, to keep my head above water. I wear 
patched boots, and look like a ruffian. I 
have fifty acres to seed, and behold my one 
yoke of oxen crawling along ! See the tired 
driver, with dusty garments, crooked back, 
and the heavy, weary look of a clodhopper, 
urging them onward ! But it is good to be 
independent, to ask no favors, to run after no 
customers or places. Wheat is cash down on 
delivery." 

Lumber is dear and must be hauled from a 
distance ; but houses, no matter how small or 
rough, must be built, and stove-pipes answer 
for chimneys till the latter luxury can be had. 
The settlers' wives realize that all practical 
knowledge and ingenuity can be turned to 



PRAIRIE LIFE. l8l 

account in a new country. They make neat 
rag-carpets with their own hands ; they cover 
their rough walls wdth newspaper, and the 
little rooms are parted off with bits of chintz 
till wooden partitions can be afforded. If the 
cane-seated chairs they brought from the East 
give out, with their own skilful fingers they 
repair them. On Sunday, though no church- 
bell proclaims the day of rest, and rough 
boards laid upon nail-kegs must take the place 
of comfortable pews, it seems good and home- 
like to go to meeting. Many a couple begins 
this untried life with high hopes. But under 
the pressure of wearing toil the young wife's 
rosy cheeks grow hollow and her garments 
wax old. In a few years the larder is empty, 
ambition is moderated, and hope is no longer 
an anchor to the soul. A certain family had 
arrived at this pitiable stage when a stranger 
appeared to claim their hospitality. He had 
come direct from an Eastern city to spy out 
the land. 



1 82 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

" Why do you allow so many weeds to 
grow?" he asked, pointing to the virgin prai- 
rie. " Why don't you live in a better house 
and dress in the fashion?" The <lismayed 
hostess concealed the fact that she had lent 
her only dress to her husband the day before 
to wear into the field, and she also concealed 
the plebeian brown sugar on the table with a 
thin layer of white. But she forgot her fears 
lest this innocent ruse should be discovered, 
when her thoughtless guest called for bakers 
bread ! 

Now all the labor and tribulation these 
people undergo naturally make them sore and 
sensitive. But they fall into the mistake of 
supposing that outsiders can realize their con- 
dition, and they hardly know how to bear any 
criticism which savors of ridicule. Yet the 
first settlers can now laugh heartily over the 
tough experiences of the past, for from the 
first stage of barely living, from a depressed 
and almost hopeless condition of mind and 



PRAIRIE LIFE. 1 83 

estate, they have triumphantly emerged. And 
now everything is dependent on the crop ; if 
that fails, all suffer. As the seasons are short, 
the crop itself is dependent on the early days 
of spring. Small grain sown after the first of 
May is nothing in harvest, and this fact has 
been learned by nine tenths of the farmers 
from bitter personal experience. Each year 
presents the same problem to be solved, — 
how help can be secured to save the vast 
grain crop of the State. It must be cut in 
season or not at all, and must be harvested in 
two weeks from the first stroke made. The 
harvest truly is plenty, but laborers are few, 
and great inducements are held out to call them 
into the field. Men are offered five dollars a 
day, women earn from two to three, and boys 
ten years old are paid one dollar for driving 
reapers. Men often refuse, at any price, to 
go into the harvest-field, and sometimes the 
entire work on a large farm is performed 
by women. Our small farmers would stand 



1 84 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

aghast at the wastefulness of their Western 
brethren ; but where everything is done on so 
large a scale much grain must be lost, and 
there is no Ruth to glean the scattered 
sheaves. 

Few of us realize what laborious work is 
done on those distant prairies in order that 
we may have bread to eat. A bushel of 
wheat w^eighs sixty pounds, and in one county 
alone in Minnesota over two milHon bush- 
els must be handled. How many times 
this heavy grain is lifted before the farmers 
receive any recompense for their labor ! 
Heavy rains come upon the prairie without 
any warning, and fall with a force almost 
unknown at the East. Happy are the farm- 
ers then if their wheat escape ; for the 
driving rains may penetrate the stalks, and 
*^ wet wheat " means despair and the most 
rigid economy till another harvest. After the 
wheat is cut, it must be bound, set up, and 
hauled to stacks to save it from the weather ; 



PRAIRIE LIFE. 1 85 

then it must be threshed, and winnowed, and 
" bagged up," and hauled ten or twenty miles 
to market. The latter is not such a hardship 
as one might imagine ; for farmers say that 
to ride twenty miles on a load of wheat, and 
home the next day on a load of lumber, is 
a rehef and a rest. 

All this labor must be performed under the 
burning Minnesota sun, which makes straw- 
berries and melons grow like magic, but wilts 
the laborers in the field. Yet the farmers 
and their wives and daughters know that if 
the crops fail they can never improve their 
surroundings, or see again their old homes 
in the far East. So they all lend a willing 
hand, and when the money is in their 
pockets they laugh at the trouble they took 
to get it there. When our Western friends 
have leisure to think of the beautiful as 
well as the practical, merrymakings under 
the harvest-moon may enliven the dull rou- 
tine of labor ; and Whittier's ideal picture 



I 86 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

of the farmer's wife may find its counterpart 
in many a prairie home. Then on the plains 
as well as among the hills the poet shall 
sing, — 

" Flowers spring to blossom where she walks 
The careful ways of duty ; 
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her 
Are flowing curves of beauty." 

The Woman Suffrage movement has not 
made much progress on the Minnesota prai- 
ries, and it behooves the apostles of that 
cause to see to it. I know an influential 
woman there who circulated a petition pray- 
ing Congress not to allow women the right 
of suffrage, and she had no difficulty in get- 
ting signatures. 

*^ You have a movement at the East called 
' Women's Rights,' " said a shrewd farmer to 
me. *' Here the women paddle their own 
canoes, and say nothing about it." 

When we are tempted to criticise the cus- 
toms and manners of our Western friends, 



PRAIRIE LIFE. 1 8/ 

we forget that emigration has not destroyed 
their individuahty or the effects of early 
training. The bad grammar which came 
from New England in spite of her schools 
may still be heard in Western villages ; the 
narrow church prejudices learned in little 
bigoted Massachusetts towns may not yet 
have perceptibly broadened. But their trials, 
so bravely met and overcome, have made the 
people sturdy and self-reliant ; and no one 
can live long on those vast prairies, under a 
boundless sky, without feeling that his own 
horizon is extending its limits, and that his 
views of men and things are growing broader. 
So it happens that the dwellers on those dis- 
tant plains are often less awkward and pro- 
vincial than the friends they left behind them, 
who are prone to think that anything is good 
enough for their benighted kinsfolk " out 
West." A certain Massachusetts religious 
society sent a box of books to a Western 
Sunday school. The recipients of the gen- 



1 88 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

erous gift paid twelve dollars for express, 
preserved one book, and received one dollar 
for the rest, which they sold for old paper ! 

Persons who have spent much time at 
the West are apt to express great animosity 
against the Indians, and in those regions 
where Indian troubles have occurred the pre- 
vailing sentiment is one of hatred or supreme 
contempt and indifference. Those who know 
the Indians only from the mild specimens 
who wander about the country to sell bas- 
kets, find this feeling hard to comprehend. 

" Don't you believe in * Lo, the poor In- 
dian ' ? " I ventured to ask a rough, good- 
natured man. 

" I believe in him long enough to get the 
top of his head ! " was the abrupt answer. 
'' I 've got two Indian scalps hanging in my 
bedroom, and I could n't sleep without them 
there." 

**The Indians are wretched creatures," 
remarked a gentleman originally from Maine, 



PRAIRIE LIFE, 1 89 

who stood by ; " not to be compared to our 
Passamaquoddys or Penobscots. If they are 
uncommonly smart they ride about, shooting 
prairie-chickens and selling plums ; otherwise, 
they live on what they can steal. I feel the 
same degree of emotion at seeing an Indian 
shot down that I should if he were a buffalo." 

These views seemed very shocking and 
heartless at first, but I understood them 
better when I knew amid what scenes they 
had been nurtured. After the Indian massa- 
cre in Minnesota a price was set by the State 
government on an Indian scalp, and as I 
listened to the thrilling incidents of that 
reign of terror, I could not wonder at the 
exultant tone with which my Maine friend 
exclaimed, " They are dying out, and are just 
as sure to be driven from the land as the 
Canaanites were to be driven out before the 
people of Israel ! " 

The lives of these busy dwellers on the 
prairie may seem to us dreary and full of 



190 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

privations, but no hardships can destroy the 
buoyant sense of freedom which is theirs. 
It gives a new zest to life, and, as a worthy 
farmer said, " is so innated into 'em " that 
they would not exchange it for all the older 
and more conventional East could offer. 

When they come home again, the places 
where they once lived seem dull and tame 
and lifeless. Old friends are glad to see 
them, but they miss the cordial, free-hearted 
welcome of the West ; and back they go to 
their prairie homes, with no regret that for- 
tune has placed them there. 




iA 



A PRAIRIE WEDDING. 

OSIE HALL was writing a letter by 
the flickering candlelight, when a 
knock at the cabin-door made her upset her 
inkstand. Her father looked up from the 
newspaper he was studying, which had evi- 
dently been the rounds of the settlements, and 
cried, " Come in ! '* But a frown came over 
his face at the sight of John Lord. Mrs. Hall 
kept placidly on with her knitting, and re- 
sponded not very heartily to the young man's 
greeting. 

"I guess Josie, by the way she jumped, 
thought the old chief had come back," said 
Susan, as she brought John a chair. 

" Did I frighten you } What do you 
mean .^ " said John. 



ig2 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

'' O, 'twas n't much," said Susan, "only 
that old Indian who wears a wliite feather 
fastened to his wrist came in this noon, and 
carried off our dinner in his blanket." 

"The hungry vagabonds will eat us out of 
house and home yet," growled Mr. Hall. 

"Don't let's talk about them," said Josie, 
imploringly. 

*' Then, to change the subject, have you 
seen the fires to-night, Josie .^ If you will 
walk over to the bluff with me, I promise you 
a grand sight." 

"Well!" The voice sounded like a de- 
lighted child's. " I '11 get my shawl." And 
Josie disappeared behind the chintz curtain 
which was hung across the room for a par- 
tition. 

Mr. Hall's paper rattled impatiently. 

"Susan," he exclaimed, "you have never 
seen the fires. Why don't you go, too t " 

"Do, Miss Hall !" said John ; and he beat 
an impatient tattoo on the back of the chair 
asfainst which he was leaning. 



A PRAIRIE WEDDING. 1 93 

Susan thanked him, tied on a quilted hood 
which almost concealed her plain face, and 
declared herself ready. 

Mr. Hall threw his paper on the floor with 
a jerk as the door closed on the little party. 

** Is Lord crazy, wife } Little Jose, only 
seventeen ! " The rough voice softened at 
the words "little Jose," but only for an in- 
stant. ** Why don't he step up to Susan } " 

*' Susan likes him too, I guess," Mrs. Hall 
said, meditatively, laying down her blue 
stocking and biting the end of her knitting- 
needle. '' He 's a likely young fellow, ain't he, 
father.?" 

" Fair to middlln'," said Mr. Hall, betraying 
unmistakably his ^' down East" origin. *'But 
he ain't so dreadful young ; must be thirty, 
and he's from York State. Josie must marry 
a Yankee." 

"And Josie ought to be at school," chimed 
in the mother, resuming her knitting. 

Then there was a long silence, broken only 



194 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

by the click of the needles. A sudden thought 
seemed to dawn on Mr. Hall. 

** Wife, you know I 've got to go East in 
two or three weeks. Suppose I take Josie to 
her aunt Ruth's and leave her there to go to 
school "i It will cost considerable to get her 
there, but I can sell a pair of steers." 

Mrs. Hall again laid down her work and 
looked at her husband in surprised silence. 
Her ball of yarn rolled unheeded to the floor. 

"Well, it may be best," she said at length; 
" but how we shall miss the child ! " 

Mr. Hall might be called a shaggy man, his 
unkempt hair and whiskers giving him sorne- 
what the appearance of a huge mastiff. The 
prairie sun and winds had browned his skin 
till it was almost as swarthy as the native red-, 
man's. He wore a long blue frock and high 
boots. Collars, slippers, and such superfluous 
articles of dress were among the vanities 
which he had abandoned with his native State. 
The rough life of a pioneer suited him ex- 



A PRAIRIE WEDDING, 1 95 

actly, and he enjoyed the hardships and pri- 
vations which cost his comfort-loving wife 
many a sigh. 

While the Fates, in the persons of father 
and mother, were thus unceremoniously dis- 
posing of Josie, the young people had reached 
the bluff. 

" Oh ! Oh ! " Josie cried. But after the 
first surprise, she folded her hands and stood 
speechless. Even Susan was too much im- 
pressed to speak. Before them, a dozen miles 
away, the prairie fires flashed out into the 
darkness. On the right a wall of fire shed its 
sullen glare ; and as if to charge this terrible 
wall, mad tongues of flame darted through the 
dry grass with lightning speed. Still beyond, 
the fire marched slowly, like battalions of red- 
coated soldiers in glittering ranks. 

" Is n't it beautiful } " said Josie, after they 
had stood some minutes in silence. " I could 
watch it forever." 

" Yes, it's a mighty pretty sight," responded 



196 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

Susan, "but I guess it is high time we were 
going home. It is getting cool/' 

John, who had waited eagerly for a chance 
to see Josie alone, felt desperate. Was he 
always to be thwarted ? 

" Stay here, Josie, till I help your sister 
down, for it is darker than it was awhile ago." 

Susan was off her guard and consented to 
be handed down the little declivity. She won- 
dered at Josie's silence on the way home. 

But Josie must have been pondering over 
John's hurried whisper, which had brought a 
quick flush to her face. She heard John tell 
Susan how he had ruined his coat fighting 
fire, and how he and Ben Dole saved their 
granaries, but it was as if she heard voices 
in her sleep. Before she knew it they had 
reached home and John was saying good 
night. 

Josie followed her sister into the cabin, 
her cheeks glowing with excitement, and her 
short curls rumpled by the evening breeze. 



A PRAIRIE WEDDING. 1 97 

The rough farmer thought it was no wonder 
John Lord admired his pet ; and he said to 
himself, *' I must get her away before the mis- 
chief 's done." 

Susan drew a chair to the stove, and put 
her feet up on the hearth to warm. " What 
time shall I begin to churn the butter in the 
morning } " she said. 

If any of John's old friends had seen him 
as he strode homeward that night, they would 
hardly have known the city youth of three 
years ago. He had been well laughed at for 
joining the small colony of New-Englanders 
in search of the Promised Land ; but his old 
home was broken up, and he determined to try 
his fortune in what was then the far West. 
The first year the settlers shared a common 
home within the four walls of a roofless struc- 
ture of logs. It was a strange, wild life for 
John. The men slept on beds made of prai- 
rie hay, and the tea they drank was made by 
steeping a white flower that grew on the 
prairie. 



198 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

But the very roughness had a charm of 
novelty. John saw with breathless delight 
the startled deer bound over the prairie 
slopes, and the wild breezes bronzed his pale 
cheeks, and whistled a boisterous welcome to 
the freedom of the West. 

When the farmers were joined by their 
families, and house after house went up on 
the prairie, John concluded to *' bach it.'* Of 
late he had been thinking that the black eyes 
of Josie Hall would brighten his lonely cot- 
tage wonderfully. But he saw only too plainly 
how loath her parents would be to give up 
their darling. 

Spring comes slowly at the great North- 
west, but with what a bound at last ! So 
thought John Lord as he stood in his cottage 
porch three weeks from the night we last saw 
him. Close by the door, through the short 
grass, wound an Indian trail, but the settlers 
had not yet learned to fear and hate their 
dusky neighbors. The softly rounded slopes, 



A PRAIRIE WEDDING. 1 99 

SO brown a month before, were green" with 
springing grass ; the black furrows were cov- 
ered with grain, while the scattered patches 
of woodland were bursting into leaf. Over 
the prairie the wild spring note of the prairie- 
chicken came booming, and the sweet meadow- 
lark flooded the fresh air with dreams of 
summer. 

" O lovely country ! " John exclaimed. 
'*But living all alone isnt lovely," he added 
with a sigh. 

" Why don't you go home and get a wife, 
then.?" 

John looked round and saw Ben Dole, one 
of his nearest neighbors, on his way to the 
village store. 

" Do you suppose any of my fine young 
lady friends would come out here t " asked 
John, a httle bitterly. " The only idea they 
have of the West is that it 's a vast plain cov- 
ered with fever and ague." 

** The sooner they get over that notion the 



200 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

better," laughed Ben. " But my wife came 
here to meet me. George ! If a woman 
had n*t spunk enough to come to this country, 
I would n't marry her ! I s'pose you know," 
continued Ben, with a sidelong look at John, 
" that Hall is going to take that pretty little 
girl of his back to the land of the Pilgrims. 
Susan will be left to console you " ; and chuck- 
ling to himself, Ben went off. 

" Susan ! " John muttered, '' I should poison 
her, or run away from her in a week. Yes, 
they are going to-morrow, and I shall never 
see my beauty again," he sadly thought. 

Looking across to the bluff where he had 
stood that dark night with the girls, he re- 
membered how the raging fires had prepared 
the way for the wild grass to spring. " Night 
is always darkest just before dawn," he 
thought ; and with the prophetic words came 
the dawn of hope. Into his eyes came a 
determined look. The little striped gopher 
which had been frisking about now stood 



A PRAIRIE WEDDING, 20I 

erect, and looked at John with its bright bead- 
like eyes, as if to say " What 's the matter ? '' 
But an emphatic *' I 'II do it ! " from his lips 
sent the pretty creature scampering to his 
hole. 

A few minutes later John was taking the 
shortest cut to Mr. Hall's, picking as he 
went the sweet pink roses which bloom so 
abundantly on the prairie. Susan w^ent to 
the door when she saw him approach. 

" What pretty roses, Mr. Lord ! " 

John drew back a little. " I should like to 
see your sister, if you please.'* Susan s coun- 
tenance fell. 

" She does n't wish to see you, sir," she 
stammered. John looked incredulous. 

" When she says that, I '11 believe it," he 
said with a smile, but looking, as Susan after- 
ward said, terribly in earnest. 

Josie heard John's voice and came to the 
door, blushing like the roses which he held 
out to her. 



202 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

" Will you go to walk with me ? " he asked. 
*' The last time, you know, Josie," he added, 
seeing the hesitation in her face. 

" I don't think mother can spare you," 
interposed Susan. " There 's your things to 
pack, and everything." 

'' Do you think she could spare yoic, Miss 
Susan } " Susan reddened at the sarcastic 
tone, and retreated hastily. " Come quick, 
or the old man will be out," whispered 
John. And Josie snatched her sunbonnet and 
obeyed. 

** Now, Josie, I want you to go to the min- 
ister's house with me." And John bent over 
to look down into the depths of the sun- 
bonnet. 

Josie gave a sudden start and walked on in 
silence, nervously pulling the roses to pieces. 

*' You don't say no, Josie. Is it yes, 
then } " 

'^ Father said it was Susan," said Josie, 
mischievously. 



A PRAIRIE WEDDING. 203 

" But you knew better ; and now, see here, 
little girl. I am all alone in the world, and I 
want you to come and take care of me and 
let me take care of you. Will you, dear ? " 

Josie pushed back her bonnet and looked 
at him in a sort of terror. '* What do you 
mean, John ? " 

" This is what I mean, Josie. To-morrow 
you are going away. How do I know what 
will happen before you come back 1 " 

^* Are you crazy, John } " And Josie stopped 
short and looked at the youth by her side as 
if he were indeed bereft of reason. 

" Now or never, my dear ! " and John's gray 
eyes looked more determined than before. 
" I would not persuade you to any wrong, but 
your father would separate us forever." John's 
voice seemed to carry conviction with it. 

The minister s wife looked curiously at the 
young couple as she opened the door, and 
then Josie realized what a strange figure she 
would make as a bride. For her dress was 



204 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

dark calico, and on her feet — the truth must 
be told — she had neither shoes nor stock- 
ings ! But John whispered, *' Never mind, 
my little girl, you are as lovely in my eyes 
as if you were fixed up in silk and laces." 

The minister was at work in his garden, 
and his wife hastened to call him, muttering, 
" As pretty a couple as ever I see." She 
came back with her hands full of blossoms 
of the pure white bloodroot which she 
twisted in Josie's dark hair. 

Josie did not go East the next day. Her 
father and mother were angry at first, but 
they had lived long enough at the West to 
know how to make the best of everything. 
Susan swallowed her disappointment with 
one wry face, and in course of time married 
a Norwegian farmer. And the wild rose that 
John's daring hand had plucked filled his 
home and life with sweetness and beauty. 



FLYAWAY. 



^P^LYAWAY had spent all her little life, 
i^i| before she came to live with us, in the 



open air and sunshine. She had scampered 
about all day in the oak groves that surround 
the mountain farm where she was born. 
And though she was gentle and affection- 
ate, she was as full of freaks and frolics as 
the mountain breezes. 

Now, though our pet may have watched 
the noisy brooks rush down the hillsides, 
she had never seen any water so calm that 
it would reflect her bright little face ; so 
she took a great fancy to the fountain on our 
lawn, and loved to sit on the granite edge 
of the lower basin and look down into the 



206 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

clear water. At first we thought her very- 
vain ; but we soon found that she was only- 
puzzled. Sometimes she was frightened at 
the strange face she saw looking up at her, 
and would start back. Or she would shyly 
paw the water, as if trying to touch that 
wonderful pussy who lived with the speckled 
trout and darting minnows, instead of play- 
ing about on the grass and catching flies for 
lunch. For did n't I tell you that Flyaway 
was a kitten } 

One day two doves flew to the fountain 
and perched on the upper basin. It was a 
very dry summer, and birds often came a 
long way to dip their beaks in the running 
water. Sometimes a little green-and-gold 
humming-bird would take a sip with his long 
bill while on the wing. Flyaway crouched on 
the lawn, her eyes fixed on the beautiful 
doves, and her tail moving to and fro, get- 
ting ready for a spring. Meantime a brown 
mouse trotted quietly down the walk behind 



FL YA WA v. 207 

the excited kitten. Then silly Flyaway made 
a leap and the doves flew away. But a sud- 
den loud splash was heard, and a minute 
after Kitty scrambled out of the water, look- 
ing very wet and very much ashamed. 

I dare say Flyaway caught little birds 
sometimes, though we tried to prevent it. 
But not far from our house lived a gentle- 
man who went out with his son every morn- 
ing in the early summer to shoot robins and 
other song-birds. Then the poor little things 
were broiled for breakfast. Another of our 
neighbors shot bright-winged birds, and gave 
them or their feathers to his sisters and 
friends to v^^ear in their hats. And we felt 
so indignant with these cruel people that we 
could not find it in our hearts to be very 
hard upon poor, ignorant Flyaway. 

You have seen Httle boys climb up on to 
some high step or box, just for the fun of 
jumping off. Well, Flyaway was very fond 
of running up the back stairs, and then leap- 



208 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

ing from one of the chamber windows into 
the garden. The first time I saw her do 
this I thought she would kill herself, or, at 
least, break her leg. But no ; the next mo- 
ment she was looking saucily down from the 
branch of an elm-tree. 

Once, when we were at dinner, we heard 
the sound of the piano. I rushed to the 
parlor, and saw Flyaway walking lightly over 
the keys, occasionally pressing one, and never 
making a false note. 

This mischievous Puss was so lively and 
quick in her motions that it seemed as \i 
she were in all places at once ; and her man- 
ners were not always what one might expect 
from such a graceful little thing. It was of 
no use for the boys and girls to play croquet ; 
for Pussy insisted on playing too, and rolled 
the balls where nobody could find them. 
When Patrick went into the garden to weed, 
Flyaway was there before him, and delighted 
to spring at the hoe and scatter the weeds 



FL YA WA K 209 

right and left. When mamma gathered flow- 
ers, the httle elf snatched them out of her 
hands ; and when the children picked cur- 
rants, Flyaway was sure to startle them by 
jumping out of the bushes. Little Frank 
insisted upon it that he had seen her eat 
currants ; which was almost too much to 
believe, except, indeed, of a fairy cat. For 
the children, who had been reading fairy- 
tales, " made beHeve " that Flyaway was no 
common cat, but some enchanted princess. 
But I fancy an unhappy princess who was 
condemned to live in the form of a cat would 
be apt to mope in a corner, instead of bub- 
bling over with fun, like our frisky Fly- 
away. 

One cold day I went into the hen-house, 
to look for eggs, and was a little startled and 
a good deal amused to see Pussy's wise face 
looking down at me from one of the highest 
nests. She was very fond of hiding herself 
behind fences and boxes, and suddenly spring- 



2IO SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

ing out, to scare the sober old hens out of 
their wits. But, though she did love dearly 
to tease, Flyaway was yet on good terms 
with the forgiving hens and chickens, and 
it was a pretty sight to see them eating 
peacefully together. 

One of her funniest tricks was the little 
game she carried on every night with the 
cow. When Mooly came home she always 
found a pile of hay in the yard ready for 
her to eat while she was milked. Flyaway 
used to bury herself in the hay before Mooly 
appeared. When the cow began to eat, up 
jumped Kitty and pulled the hay out of her 
mouth. 

She really seemed to understand what was 
said, and to take an interest in all that hap- 
pened. One evening the horse got entan- 
gled in his rope, and fell down in the stall, 
with his legs all twisted together. Patrick 
came running in for help ; but before any 
one could get there Flyaway was on the 



FL YAWAY. 211 

spot, examining the case with an air of great 
concern. But, though she was on such inti- 
mate terms with other animals, she was 
jealous of all cats. At the sight of a wee 
kitten, who once wandered into the yard, 
our charming Flyaway was at once trans- 
formed into a small fury ; and when Frankie 
took the kitten in his arms the naughty cat 
growled so fiercely that we hastened to put 
the little stranger out of sight. Now Fly- 
away is more sedate, for she has kittens of 
her own. But though they inherit her love 
for fun, they^are not so bright and interesting 
as their mother was, and the children never 
even dream of their being enchanted. 



SOME LITTLE FOLKS WHO LIVE 
IN THE DARK. 



~NE winter, when there was a great 
5 excitement among Boston boys over 
the fine coasting, I used to see, in a certain 
secluded street, a party of Wind boys sliding 
down hill as fearlessly as if their eyes were 
as bright as yours, my little readers. They 
guided themselves partly by their acute 
sense of hearing, and if they sometimes 
ran into a fence, nobody was hurt. These 
boys came from Dr. Howe's School for the 
Blind, which Charles Dickens visited and 
wrote about the first time he was in this 
country. A great many curious strangers 
visit this school, for, though there are now 
many other such institutions, this was the 



LITTLE FOLKS WILO LIVE IN THE DARK. 2 1 3 

first one established in this country, and 
here Laura Bridgman still lives, no longer 
a little girl, but a middle-aged woman. 
Many of you have read the history of Laura, 
and know how Dr. Howe found her in a 
little village among the mountains when she 
was a pretty child six years old ; and how he 
took her home, and, though she was blind 
and deaf and dumb, taught her to read and 
write and do many useful things. Laura is 
still bright and happy and very fond of her 
friends. It would amuse you to see her 
delight when she has a new shawl or bon- 
net, for she likes pretty things, though she 
cannot see them ; and if she should take a 
fancy to you, she would pass her hand over 
your dress and feel your sleeve-buttons to 
know if they were like her own. Perhaps 
the strangest thing about Laura is her won- 
derfully nice touch, for she carries her eyes 
at her finger-ends ! One day she went into 
the parlor and merely touched the hand of 



214 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

a lady who stood there ; and then she gave 
a joyful cry, sprang into the air, and fell 
fainting on the lady's neck. It was an old 
and dearly loved teacher, who had been ab- 
sent many years in the Sandwich Islands, 
and had returned to this country without 
Laura's knowledge. 

All the pupils of this school are taught 
simple trades, so that by and by they may 
be able to make their own way in the world ; 
and some of them are much more successful 
in earning their bread and butter than many 
people who can see. One of the girls, who 
was very anxious to learn to play the piano, 
was not allowed to study music, because it 
was thought she had no musical talent. . But 
she was so determined to learn that she prac- 
tised in secret, and now she is one of the 
regular music-teachers of the school. Once 
an attempt was made to form a brass band 
among the girls, like the boys' band, but the 
girls were not strong enough to blow the 



LITTLE FOLKS WHO LIVE IN THE DARK. 2 1 5 

great instruments. They learn to cut and 
make their own clothes, and some of them, 
anxious to earn a little pocket-money, have 
been found making bead baskets, or crochet- 
ing mats, long after they have gone to bed. 
Their chief amusement is pbying dominos, 
and one of their favorite books is *'The Old 
Curiosity Shop," which Dickens's own gener- 
osity placed within their reach. They never 
weary of reading, with their nimble fingers, 
the story of little Nell. 

Some of the children have very odd, quaint 
little ways. Both boys and girls take care of 
their own rooms, and one morning a little 
girl could not spread the quilt smoothly on 
her bed. So she took it off, rolled it into the 
shape of a doll, scolded, patted, and coaxed 
it, and trotted it on her knee ; and then she 
unfolded the quilt, and it gave her no more 
trouble. 

There is a dear little French boy in the 
school, and when he first came the other boys 



2l5 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

made him very unhappy by telhng him God 
would not hear his prayers if he said them in 
French ! For bUnd boys are quite as mis- 
chievous as children who can see, and love 
to play tricks on each other. The older boys 
are not allowed to go to the hbrary in the 
evening till the small urchins have gone to 
bed, for there is not room for all. One even- 
ing the big boys disobeyed this rule, and 
one of them, who could perfectly imitate Dr. 
Howe's voice and manner, ordered all his 
companions off to bed. They stood in great 
awe of the good doctor, and marched off 
very meekly. But when the last had gone, 
up stepped the Doctor himself, and laying his 
hand on the mimic's shoulder, said, "Very 
well done, my lad ; now you may go, too ! " 
As a rule blind children are not so strong, 
and therefore not so lively and noisy as oth- 
ers ; but they are much more thoughtful, and 
very sensitive to a sharp word. When they 
are alone their faces often wear a mournful 



LITTLE FOLKS WHO LIVE IN THE DARK. 2 1 / 

expression, and I have seen little bits of girls 
sit motionless, with bent heads, for many 
minutes at a time. They become much at- 
tached to their teachers, and in the vacations 
send them curious little rolls of paper through 
the mails. These are pricked letters, and a 
good many sheets of paper are required for 
even a short letter written in this way. 

Often these children are so much petted 
and indulged at home that they are hard to 
manage. Not long ago a wild little Irish girl 
was brought to the school from the North 
End, a place in Boston where the poorest 
and lowest classes live, and where good men 
and women are holding mission schools, and 
trying to teach the poor people how to make 
their homes better and happier. At first this 
little waif was so rebellious that nothing could 
be done with her. When she was told to say 
her lessons she would lie down on the floor 
and scream ; and one day, in a passion, she 
kicked one of her Httle schoolmates and hurt 

lO 



2l8 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

her very much. But the power of love can 
work miracles. One day a teacher put a vase 
of flowers in the child's room. This delighted 
the little thing, who declared the flowers were 
beautiful. After that she privately informed 
one of her classmates that she " was going to 

be bad in every class except Miss 's." 

By and by this favorite teacher, whom Flora 
called '^ her dear mother," was taken sick, 
and finally had to go away. Little Flora 
went into her room, threw herself upon the 
empty bed, and cried bitterly. Then she 
began to think how she could please this 
dear absent teacher, and hearing of a sick 
and suffering child in a neighboring town, 
she sent her a doll's cap and chair made of 
beads. They were queer-looking little ob- 
jects, for Flora has not yet learned the art 
of bead-work. But she is learning a more 
beautiful lesson, — how to forget herself and 
minister to others. And so, though it will 
take long years for Flora to outlive the in- 



LITTLE FOLKS WHO LIVE IN THE DARK. 2 1 9 

fluences of her early childhood, it is hoped 
she will grow up into a gentle, lovable 
woman. 

The brightest scholars never want any 
assistance unless it is given in the same way 
it would be given to a person who can see ; 
and they like to be told to see a thing, not 
feel it. For they dislike to be considered un- 
fortunate, and think it almost an insult to be 
pitied. " I would n't give a cent to see," said 
one of these children not long ago ; and she 
really meant what she said. Of course, the 
poor thing could not know what a world of 
wonder and beauty was shut out from her. 
And when another little girl, nine years old, 
was asked how she became blind, she replied : 
"By being brought to the light when only 
three weeks old ; but you know we must 
bear these things." 

Now, many "seeing children," and some of 
us grown-up folks, too, I am sorry to say, 
often feel discontented and " blue," and think 



220 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

we are hardly used, without much reason. 
So it is good for us to know something about 
people who are really unfortunate, but who 
are yet happy and contented and full of 




QUAINT LETTERS FROM THE 
SOUTH. 



OON after the war a benevolent lady 
of Boston employed a young man to 
open a school for freedmen in the central part 
of East Florida. The school was held in 
what the negroes call a '' praise-house," or 
meeting-house. It was a little log building, 
without any doors or windows ; but there 
was an open doorway at each end, and the 
sunlight streamed brightly through the great 
spaces between the logs. On one side of the 
room were rough benches for seats, and on 
the opposite side stood the pulpit. This rude 
affair looked like a great box, open at the 
top, and had an entrance in the side, which 
the minister reached by a flight of steps. 



222 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

The dozen urchins who assembled here the 
first day of the school seemed a little awed by 
the solemn character of the place ; but this 
feeling soon wore off. As the fame of the 
new school spread abroad, pupils came flock- 
ing in from the neighboring plantations. 
Even men and women who had grown old 
in slavery were glad to study their primers 
with the children. Mr. Stone had taught in 
Northern schools ; but none of his white 
pupils ever made such rapid progress or re- 
ceived instruction half so eagerly as these 
thirsty little creatures, — the children of the 
ignorant freedmen. They entered the school- 
room with as much excitement and happy 
anticipation as the young people of the North 
feel when a long-expected holiday comes. 

I once asked Mr. Stone if they were never 
naughty or mischievous in school. 

** Very rarely," he said ; then he laughed, 
and told this little incident. 

At the close of school one day, when the 



QUAINT LETTERS FROM THE SOUTH. 223 

roll was called, Henry Jones answered " Good.'* 
Instantly one of the girls raised her hand in 
protest. "What is it, Kate?" 

" Henry whispered to me, sir." 

'' What did he say ? " 

" He say I sweeter than honey." And Kate 
hid her face in her handkerchief 

It was pleasant to watch the mirthful, happy 
children at their sports. A pretty grove of 
oak and hickory surrounded the school-house, 
and one of their favorite amusements was 
swinging in the grapevines which hung from 
the trees. Sometimes the girls twisted sprays 
of the fragrant yellow jasmine about their 
heads, which lent a sort of tropical grace to 
their dark faces and the old log-hut. Strange 
visitors came to inspect the little school. 
Often a bright-winged bird flew through the 
open doorway. The squirrels peeped curi- 
ously through the cracks between the logs, 
as if to see what their curly-headed friends 
were about ; and once, to the consternation 



224 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

of the children, a large snake appeared, but 
he was expelled without ceremony. Every 
day in the summer-time the grateful children 
brought their teacher presents of delicious 
fruit and flowers, as rare as beautiful to a 
Northern eye. Indeed, his little friends were 
so lavish of their gifts that he was often per- 
plexed to know how to dispose of them. 

Mr. Stone taught the school three years, 
and each time he went back from his annual 
visit to the North he was greeted with un- 
bounded joy. The pleasure of the old peo- 
ple at his returning to teach their children 
was very touching. A man who rejoiced in 
the queer name of Joe Muttonjoy exclaimed, 
on one of these occasions, " I 'se right glad 
to see you back again, Mr. Stone. I 'se glad, 
glad, proud, proud ! I hear heaps of people 
round here sayin* dey's glad, glad, proud, 
proud ! " And an old uncle, who was stand- 
ing near, cried, with great enthusiasm, — 
'' He is good ! He is brave ! " 



QUAINT LETTERS FROM THE SOUTH. 22$ 

Not less gratifying was the more quiet 
salutation of his old housekeeper. '' Good 
Mr. Stone, tank de Fader an' de Sperit for 
bringin* you safe back." 

The warm affection which these simple- 
hearted people felt for their teacher was 
quaintly expressed in their letters, received 
after his return to the North. Here are some 
extracts from these letters. The handwriting, 
which I cannot give, is invariably neat ; the 
spelling is sometimes odd enough, but we 
must remember that when the school w^as 
started the writers of these letters did not even 
know the alphabet, and few of them were able 
to attend school regularly. The last letter, 
which was received only a few weeks ago, 
shows that though the school has long been 
in other hands, its first teacher is not for- 
gotten. 

'' I should like to see you, kind Teacher, 
and hear from you. Mother say when shall 
you return, she say you is needed much. 

10* o 



226 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

When you went away it seem almost like my 
mother was gone away. I felt very 4onesome. 
I have no school to go to not in the weak not 
in the Sundays and I have not receive one 
letter from you. I have been looking and 
looking and listening and listening and trying 
to hear from you. Shall we meet beyond the 
river where the surges neer shall roll." 

*^ Dear Teacher I was very sorry to think 
you has break up school. I want you to give 
me a presant so that I can remember you as 
long as I live so that if I never see you no 
more I hope to meet you in heaven where 
there shall Be no more parting forever eternal 
in kingdom. I am still trying to learn my 
books. Pleas make hast and send a person 
out here I want to go to school, so end the 
letter.'^ 

^' When I think what a good teacher I had 
and how much I love and cannot see you it 
melts me into tears. I can see you face but 



QUAINT LETTERS FROM THE SOUTH, 227 

I cannot hear you vois. I would like to 
write to you once a month but I am not able 
to afford the paper. I have read through my 
Liberty three time Since you have been gone. 
I hope I will see your once more face before 
I die I want you to see if I improve any or 
not since you saw my writing." 

"dear teacher I must tell you the truth we 
was mothen [more than] happy to here from 
you oh come again Mr. Stone. We was so 
happy to here from our loving teacher we all 
well and send thousand of love. we can 
never forget our loving Teacher who learn 
us to read and write. Your affectionate 
Scollar." 




CORREGGIO'S '^ LAST ANGEL." ^ 



FROM THE FRENCH. 




ROTHER THADDEUS was once a 
brave officer, and served long and 
honorably in the Venetian army ; but grow- 
ing weary of a soldier's life, he found a happy 
home on the quiet heaths of Parma. He 
lived about half a league from the village of 
Correggio, in a sort of hermitage grotesquely 
constructed from the ruins of an old Roman 



* Not much is known of Correggio's life ; but though the 
art of painting may have been little esteemed and poorly 
rewarded at Parma, the accounts of his extreme suffering 
from poverty are now disbelieved. The story of the cop- 
per coin and the fatal journey furnished Olenschlager, 
the Danish poet, with the theme of one of his finest 
dramas. 



CORREGGiaS ''LAST ANGELA 229 

camp. Our hermit was widely known and 
loved, for he united the skill of a physician 
with the charity of an apostle. 

Late one night, in the summer of 1534, 
Brother Thaddeus heard a loud knocking at 
his door. In the ringing voice that once 
cheered his Sclavonian troops on to victory, 
he cried, '' Who is there t " 

But when a trembling, childish voice re- 
plied, " The son of Antonio Allegri," the her- 
mit hastily rose and opened the door. The 
child was out of breath, his eyes were full of 
tears, and those he had shed in his rapid walk 
had been dried on his cheeks by the miidnight 
wind. 

" My father is very sick," sobbed the boy, 
" and mother begs you to come quickly." 

The hermit seized his staff. 

" Come, my child ! We will throw weari- 
ness and sleep to the briers of the road." 

As they hurried along the hermit asked 
Ludovic the cause of his father's illness. 



230 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

"Ah ! Brother," said the child in a strange 
tone for a boy of thirteen years, " my father's 
disease springs from an ancient trouble, — 
from poverty." 

Thaddeus looked at the child in surprise. 

" Yes," persisted Ludovic, " poverty has 
killed him. You know my father's toil cannot 
satisfy his hard-hearted creditors. Eight days 
ago our landlord, that wealthy Jew of Parma, 
for four crowns father owed him took away 
the painting of " Christ in the Garden of 
Olives." Father had worked diligently on it 
for six months. The same day the collector 
of the village made him paint portraits of him- 
self and his wife for nothing, pretending we 
had not paid our taxes." 

" Alas ! " exclaimed the hermit, "is there no 
sympathy in this world for genius V 

" Some days after this," continued Ludovic, 
"the baker refused to trust my mother, and 
Bonoletta, the milkmaid, would not leave the 
pint of milk for my two little sisters. Mother 



CO:RREGGIO'S ''LAST ANGELA 23 I 

wept passionate tears of shame and despair, 
and the children wept because they were 
hungry. Then father said, * If you weep, 
you will dishearten me, and I cannot work. 
The Franciscan convent owes me money, 
and to-morrow I will go to Parma. In 
the mean time, here are some crumbs of 
bread I have saved. Share them, and be 
patient till to-morrow evening/ And he 
took a piece of bread from the drawer of his 
easel. He had eaten nothing himself for 
two days." 

" Why did not Antonio come to me } " in- 
terrupted Thaddeus. 

" My father's heart is larger than his for- 
tune, and he would blush to beg a glass of 
water from his best friend.'* 

'' O Antonio, Antonio ! " cried the hermit, 
deeply moved. " But finish your sad story, 
Ludovic." 

'' Father started for Parma before dawn the 
next morning. He hastened to the monks 



232 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

and induced them to pay him ; but either 
from malice, or because the reverend fathers 
had no other coin in their coffers, they paid 
the two hundred crowns in copper. My 
father returned to Correggio on foot, under 
a burnins: sun, with this enormous burden. 
When he reached home he had hardly 
strength to say, ' We are saved ! ' Dropping 
his heavy load, he drank two large goblets of 
cold water to quench the thirst that devoured 
him. An hour after he was seized with a 
ra2:in2: fever. A terrible crisis has come to- 
night, and mother sent me for you. Perhaps 
it is too late," added the boy, " for death comes 
swiftly.'* And reverently making the sign of 
the cross, he led the recluse to the chamber 
of the invalid. 

The noble peasant, the illustrious author of 
so many grand works, was extended upon a 
miserable pallet covered with a strip of green 
serge. His wife and eldest son stood at the 
head of the bed and made with their entwined 



CORREGGIO'S ''LAST ANGELr 233 

hands a pillow for the painter, for breathing 
was already painful. Julia, the eldest daugh- 
ter, who was celebrated at Parma for her 
great beauty, leaned against the bedpost, her 
hands crossed upon her breast ; her eyes were 
fixed on a crucifix which hung from the wall, 
and she seemed to pray fervently. The little 
girls, Agnes and Veronica, slept peacefully in 
each other's arms on a bundle of straw in a 
corner of the room. The violence of the dis- 
ease had distorted the features of the artist, 
and his fine face bore the marks of both phys- 
ical and mental suffering. He was frightfully 
thin, and flames seemed to dart from his 
sunken eyes. 

" Thaddeus," said the painter in a faint 
voice, "am I in danger of death .^" 

Thaddeus made no reply. The painter re- 
peated his question, but was again met with 
silence. 

*'Then there is no longer any hope," he 
sadly cried ; '' and my poor children ! " 



234 ' SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. ^ 

" God may work a miracle," said the her- 
mit, "but science can do naught." 

'' He will not save me," replied Antonio. 
*' Does he help the feeble ? The day I came 
from Parma I saw an innocent dove balan- 
cing itself on the branch of a sycamore ; a 
serpent was coiled about the trunk. Light- 
ning struck the tree, and the dove was 
killed; but the reptile, unharmed, fled hiss- 
ing away." 

"Dear Antonio, let us not seek to un- 
derstand the mysteries of God. My friend, 
think of your soul ; recall your past life, 
and — " 

" My past life ! " interrupted the dying man. 
"Toil and poverty have been my constant 
companions. I have borne humiliation and 
injustice without murmuring, and have never 
resented the insults heaped upon me. I 
have educated my children in the fear of 
God. Why, then, do you wish me to review 
my past life, and why should I fear the judg- 



CORREGGIO'S ''LAST ANGELA 235 

ment of him who has meted out my suffer- 
mgs?" 

The recluse kissed the hand of the painter. 
" Simple man ! Sublime genius ! " he cried. 
'^ Yes, you are right. The purity of your 
life, your active charity, will be your best 
advocates before the tribunal of God." 

Antonio now felt that life ebbed fast. " My 
wife, my dear children," he said, *' I must 
leave you. O, do not weep ! I could have 
wished to make you happier, but the perse- 
verance of misfortune overcame the persever- 
ance of my brush. Ottavia and Ludovic, 
never abandon your mother and little sisters, 
who sleep there, under God's protection and 
yours." 

At this moment little Agnes awoke with a 
start, and struck by the mournful scene before 
her eyes, the tears of her brothers and sisters, 
she kneeled in her crib, folded her hands, 
and murmured a prayer. The grace of the 
child, the perfect oval of her figure, framed 



236 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE, 

by the luxuriant ringlets of her golden hair, 
the sweetness of her face which seemed to 
seek in the heavens an unknown star, awoke 
the instincts of the artist. 

'* Give me my brushes, my pallet ! " he 
cried. 

"Give them to him," said Thaddeus. "The 
artist, as well as the warrior, longs to die on 
the battle-field." 

They raised the sick man and made a kind 
of easel on his bed. The great master took 
his brushes, mixed his colors, and with a hand 
already cold with death reproduced upon the 
canvas, with that correctness of design, that 
harmony of coloring which distinguished his 
artistic genius, the features of the delicate 
child, whom he made an angel before leaving 
an orphan. The work ended, the painter said, 
" I signed my first pictures 'Antonio AUegri,' 
which was my father's name. Later ones I 
have signed * Lieti,' my mother's name. How 
shall I sign this 1 " 



CORREGGIO'S ''LAST ANGELA 237 

"With your immortal name," said the re- 
cluse ; " the name of Correggio." 

Antonio then slowly wrote these words at 
the bottom of the canvas : " Correggio in limine 
mortis pinxit, 17 Aitgnst, 1534." 

Then, completely exhausted, he fell back, 
turned his head toward the crucifix, extended 
his arms to his children, and breathed his last. 
But the soul of the artist, before leaving its 
earthly abode, was revealed in the admirable 
sketch he had just traced. The *' Last Angel 
of Correggio " was his farewell to earth, and 
one of his most brilliant titles to glory in the 
eyes of posterity. 

The villagers of Correggio and Parma 
crowded to the funeral of the great artist that 
Italy had lost. Thus the man whose life had 
been crushed by adversity was called great 
and divine when the coffin closed over his 
body. 

The noblemen of all the countries of Italy- 
sent Jewish courtiers to Correggio, to purchase 



238 SEASHORE AND PRAIRIE. 

the works of the illustrious painter. Advised 
by these secret agents and influenced by her 
poverty, his widow consented to make a piib- 
lic sale of those rich waifs of genius. When 
the other paintings had been disposed of, the 
last work of the master was put up at auction, 
his " Last Angel," This masterpiece was 
about to be struck off at the moderate sum 
of thirty-three ducats, when a man dressed 
as captain of the Sclavonian troops boldly ad- 
vanced, and proudly placed his buff gauntlet 
upon the picture. 

'' In the name of Francis I.," said he, in a 
loud voice, '^ I offer twenty thousand crowns 
for this picture." No one dared outbid the 
King of France. When the Venetian captain 
took possession of the picture in the name of 
Francis, the widow and children of Correggio 
recognized the recluse of the Roman camp. 

" You save us. Captain ! " they cried. 

*' Not I ; the King of France is your pre- 
server. My only merit is having pointed out 



CORREGGIO'S '' LAST ANGELr 239 

to that magnanimous prince a great talent 
dead, and great misfortune existing." 

** And where are you going?" asked Julia. 

** I return," said Thaddeus, " to the Roman 
camp, to lay aside my uniform and resume 
my hermit's robe, not again to leave it till I 
rejoin my well-loved Correggio/* 




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